Esoteric Allegations
by smushname
Summary: Current manga spoilers. Lavi and Kanda are on a routine mission when Tyki expresses his disappointment with regards to Lavi's treatment of his 'niece.' Lucky/Luu/Liedoll/Tuu non-con/oral/anal/yaoi/tentacles
1. Chapter 1

Don't own D.Gray Man. If I did … the zombies would never have happened.

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"Deep," he finally concluded, when he felt the distant vibration of Ozuchi Kozuchi striking the spring floor. "Any other ideas?"

Kanda's eyes slid to his face without blinking, in an enquiring manner only he could pull off, and Lavi shrugged, retracting his Innocence. It was at least a hundred feet, though he was just guessing and could be off by as much as twenty. And in his opinion, twenty feet of boiling water was too much.

There was no way they were diving into that.

Both stood on the slate rock floor, staring at a pool of seething water roughly fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long. It was the opening of a natural spring that fed the attached spa, though of course it was no longer in service; cooking your clientele was a good way to go out of business. They'd made a bid to cool the rising temperatures with the river water intake, which was splashing a healthy amount of water into the pool just before it ran along a stone canal to the bathhouse, but once spring had come and gone, and the river was no longer glacier cold, it hadn't been enough.

And truth be known, as suspect as the timing of this sudden temperature increase sounded, it wasn't outside of the realm of possibilities that it wasn't actually being caused by Innocence. Thermal vents opened and closed all the time. If not for the fact that a thermal vent would have opened the day after an Indian princess's treasured hairpin had fallen into the spring, they would have thanked the innkeeper for her time and continued on without a backward glance.

And to be honest, the story had piqued his interest not because of the sudden change of the spring or the hairpin, but the fact that the _reason_ the hairpin ended up in the spring was because the princess ended up in the spring, as she was unhappy with the water temperature in the bathhouse and needed something warmer to skinnydip in . . .

The samurai tched in irritation, twitching his head to move a steam-sticky lock of hair off his face, and Lavi dragged his mind back to the situation at hand. It was uncomfortably hot in the spring house; Lavi was considering shucking his jacket and his companion was already sweating. Sticking his head under the riverwater spout sounded delicious but he decided against it, shaking droplets of water from Ozuchi Kozuchi before replacing the hammer on his belt.

"I guess we'll have to wait for Reever and the group. They'll think of something."

Not that there was really time for that; the spa was going to be torn down and a giant rock rolled onto the spring. It turned out the land was unusually fertile, all of a sudden, and all the trees in the bordering orchards were producing fruit that tasted unlike anything they'd ever experienced. That rumor was what had drawn them to the town, and Komui had wisely decided not to send Allen with them; if he had, they would still be eating pie.

But that rumor brought with it tourists, thus money. Anyone that was threatening this new miracle, Exorcist or not, was unwelcome. It was the reason they'd had to sneak into the building in the dead of night rather than earlier that day, and the reason the town would not be particularly willing to wait a week while some scientists from England came down with a robot that was capable of swimming in a hundred foot deep cauldron of boiling water.

And if the Finders had had time to hear the rumor, it meant the Earl would not be far behind. Luckily for them, any Akuma dispatched would not have had the opportunity to overhear what they had heard, about the subsequent shutting down of the spa, and would still be looking among the trees for the Innocence, rather than here.

Which brought him right back to the immediate problem. They had some time, but not enough time to wait for Reever. Akuma were one thing, but a giant boulder covering the spring - and increasing the pressure, which could sweep away the Innocence - was another altogether.

Kanda was giving him a sour look, having internally come to the same conclusion, and Lavi shrugged at him. "Look, Innocence or not, I'm not getting in there." There was always the chance it was nothing. New volcanic activity in the area could explain increased nitrogen in the soil, thus the plant growth.

Though a naked Indian princess sounded more fun.

"I'll convince them to wait." It had such a bitter eagerness to it, and the samurai fingered Mugen's hilt lightly.

It was Lavi's turn to glare. "You'd have to kill half the town. This improvement is too important to them. And I already asked," he added, nodding to his golem, which was fluttering high above them near the vent that allowed the steam to escape. "We can't get enough funds telegraphed here in time to buy the property. They won't sell it for any price."

Yuu had probably been serious about intimidating the locals, but it was largely pointless; most of the town wanted the useless spa and spring gone so they could plant blueberry bushes for late summer harvest. There was no way the two of them could hold off that many people without causing at least a few of them serious harm. And while Mugen was an excellent tool for putting fear into the hearts of children and Akuma everywhere, none of Kanda's illusions could get that Innocence off the bottom. And Lavi didn't think a fire seal, even a large one, could boil the water as fast as the spring was feeding it. Easily four hundred gallons a minute were moving into the bathhouses, which were massive, and that wasn't counting the river water coming in.

Although . . .

It was probably a bad idea, but he could probably swirl all the water out of the spring, at least temporarily, with wind. It wouldn't be evaporating it, just moving it, but if he lost his concentration they'd be doused in really, really hot water. But it would certainly lessen the amount of water Kanda would have to slog through-

Except he'd also have to figure out how to get in and then out of a hundred foot hole while boiling water was swirling on the wall of it. He wasn't honestly sure he could hold the seal and still have Ozuchi Kozuchi extend and retract. Still, it was better than letting the opportunity pass by.

"How much water would you estimate is coming in from the river?"

Lavi glanced at the large, round pipe. Water filled only the bottom eighth before pouring into the spring, and while the canal that linked the spring to the bathhouses was more than half full, it could move quite a bit more water. Even if it overflowed, there was still the single door, to Lavi's left, that they could open in a pinch.

"Not enough?" He gave the other a grin, and Kanda rolled his eyes and unzipped his jacket. A well-aimed knock from Ozuchi Kozuchi spun the valve beside the river pipe, and a substantial amount of river water came roaring into the spring room. Steam shot into the air as the cooler water met the hotter, and Lavi brought up his arm to protect himself from splashback as Kanda removed his boots.

As the scent of fish came in with the steam, Lavi realized why the spa owners hadn't thought of doing that. Mixing more cold water with the hot to bring the temperature down. Opening the pipe meant letting in more of the rest of the river, and fish didn't go well with lavender and rose oil.

"Once you hit bottom I'll give you ten seconds to find it and get back to the handle."

Kanda just nodded, securing Mugen on his back, and Lavi extended his Innocence into the spring, about seventy feet. Once it had grown to the appropriate size, he started to roll the handle between his hands, making the end a giant agitator. Mixing the hot with the cold, cooling the spring near the source. It wouldn't get it cold enough to be comfortable, but it might prevent Yuu from getting too badly scalded.

Once he had a fairly decent whirlpool going he retracted his Innocence, shrugging out of his own jacket quickly as the temperature skyrocketed with the steam. The special fabric would protect them from heat, but not from scalding any better than their shirts would. Kanda came forward, grabbing the handle near the head of the hammer, and Lavi gave him another look. "You sure about this?"

"Che. Hurry up."

The samurai got a decent grip; for someone that hadn't often ridden his Innocence, he obviously understood the physics of suddenly being shoved into the eye of a whirlpool. All it was doing was continuing the agitation of cooler and warmer water and it would slow quickly. He'd have to spin it back up as soon as Kanda let go to search for the Innocence.

"Ten seconds," he repeated, and Kanda took several deep breaths in a row. He gave a barely perceptible nod, and Lavi took his own preparatory breath.

"Extend."

Ozuchi Kozuchi responded beautifully, as it always did with new riders, and the last thing he saw were bare feet disappearing into the steam and water. He extended the hammer as fast as he dared, twisting it with the current he'd created to give Kanda a break, and when he'd gotten exactly as far as he had before, he felt the hammer hit bottom. He gave Kanda a scant second to let go before he pulled the hammer up, about six feet, and began rolling it between his hands again.

"One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand . . . " Who decided it took the average English-speaking person a second to say one-thousand anyway? He could keep time in his head as easily without it, but things seemed a bit more muffled with all the steam, and his voice sounded very close. There was no drag on the hammer, so Kanda really had let go of it, and there wasn't so much as an ounce of extra fat on him. He would stay close to if not on the bottom with very little work. The problem was that the hottest water was down there, and the Innocence itself could be far hotter than that.

Hadn't Kanda been unbuttoning one of his cuffs? His shirt fabric was thin but would do th-

The door never opened. It was in his peripheral vision the entire time, and it never opened. He clung to that memory like a lifeline, using it to deny the pain as his eyes impartially recorded the handle of his Innocence disappearing into the water. He had let go, his arm was limp at his side, tingling from impact and ever-increasing pain, and the angle of it meant his elbow was dislocated if not shattered entirely-

That analysis was more than enough for his nervous system, which simplified it, and Lavi gasped, choking on steam and blinking away stars. The breath escaped as a shout of pain, and he turned to his right, there was nothing there but a solid stone wall, what the hell-

There was a figure in the steam. Someone standing right there in the room with him. Not three feet away.

Shit. _Shit!_

"Extend!"

He made a dive for the spring, not caring if his skin was scalded right off. His Innocence was still close enough, still active, it would respond to his voice and what good was a right or left-handed Bookman, he was ambidextrous. One broken arm wouldn't stop him-

His jaw was struck by what felt like the wall and he landed hard on his left shoulder, skidding across the steam-slicked floors and directly into the spring.

It was hot. Not boiling, but much warmer than bathwater, and the outer ring of his whirlpool had him instantly. He flailed in the water, screaming as his right arm was bent by the current, and water flooded into his mouth. His feet caught on a corner, something, smooth and solid - the floor of the canal - and he kicked hard, shooting back to the surface. The current had already dragged him into the first of the bathhouses, too far from his Innocence-

"Exten-"

His hair was caught in a vise and he was hauled half out of the water by it, his left hand passing right through the force holding him but catching on nothing. His bandana had slipped in the water, but not so far that he couldn't see what had hold of him.

_Who_ had hold of him.

"It's Mr. Eyepatch again," the smooth voice noted. Then he threw him headfirst into the nearest wall.

His ears were ringing and his mouth tasted of old copper pipe, and everything seemed distant. His arm burned right through it, though, and he was still spluttering from the water. Wasn't out long then, maybe a few seconds. His eye was open, he could feel it blinking but sight was a long time coming, and in that time he knew the Noah was approaching.

The only Noah he knew of that could walk through walls. Tyki Mikk.

The bastard that had almost killed Allen Walker. That had almost killed him as well.

But Kanda could handle him, Kanda-

Kanda was never going to make it out of that spring in time, not one hundred feet. The whirlpool would lose momentum quickly, it wouldn't be cooling the water that deep anymore-

The front of his shirt was grabbed and he was hauled to his feet, banging his right arm against the wall, and he screamed through his teeth, left hand still uselessly struggling to hang on to the Noah. It was pointless; there was a brief flash of yellow light as his hand passed through the Noah's arm, leaving behind only an odd, hexagonal cell-like pattern on the Noah's skin and clothes. Almost as if the Noah were made of a beehive.

He left the same pattern on his target when he reached through them. Which he would probably be doing shortly.

"Ne, ne, why are you struggling?" As polite as always, when he wasn't sporting tentacles and pointy teeth. "You're Bookman Junior, aren't you? I thought your kind had better memories than that."

He shoved him against the wall again, almost as if to reposition them for his own comfort, and Lavi managed to bottle his pain into a low whine. God, it hurt, he'd broken it in the worst possible place. His fingers and wrist still worked but the break had to support the weight of his lower arm and couldn't even be tucked against his side for safekeeping.

"I would have thought the arm would bring everything back. It was damaged the last time we met, no?"

"The lack of tentacles . . . is an improvement," he grated, and the fist in his shirt pressed a bit harder towards his throat. "I guess General Cross really did beat them out of you."

There was very little light; the only torch they'd dared ignite was in the springhouse, and very little of that yellow flame penetrated the canal opening. Here, at least, there were high windows, and cold white moonlight gave him only the faintest outline of the Noah. Impeccably dressed as usual, with his dark, curly hair swept back beneath a dapper black hat. He looked no different than he had the night he tried to kill Allen.

No different than that night in Edo, before Allen had tried to kill the Noah in him.

Obviously whatever the Sword of Exorcism had done, it had not been sufficient to purge the influence of the Noah from the human Tyki Mikk. And the idea that he could take that form again, stand up to the attack of a general, even for a short time-

"And how is the good general faring? I heard rumor he was killed by his own."

Lavi clenched his jaw and said nothing, and the Noah laughed.

"You're shaking pretty badly, Mr. Eyepatch. Was the water that cold?" Tyki leaned closer, pinning him now with a forearm across his throat, and again, his clawed left hand passed through it like it wasn't there. "Don't tell me a Bookman, even a junior Bookman, is afraid."

The Noah was so close their knees were touching, he could feel it, it meant the Noah wanted to touch his knees, so his knees could touch back. He had no angle, they were too close together, but he clung to the idea, desperate for an opportunity to use it. "It's a chilly night, but the water's fine. You should give it a try."

Tyki laughed delightedly. "Are you suggesting I go soak my head?" He said it almost fondly. "But I will try the waters, when I gather the Innocence at the bottom of that spring. Even if it was only rumor, at the very least I shall get yours and your companion's." The Noah's unoccupied left arm brushed down his own right, applying the slightest pressure to the break, and Lavi couldn't help the yelp that escaped. "That arm seems to be giving you some trouble. Would you like me to set it?" The touch became a bit more firm, working a stifled moan out of him, and Tyki's dark-hooded eyes seemed to brighten, just slightly.

That's right; they lightened, depending on how much or little of the Noah's powers he was using. Or did it depend on mood? How much was the Noah, and how much was the human?

"Perhaps I could remove the offending bone altogether."

And then probably beat him to death with it. Lavi struggled for a steady breath. "I thought hearts were your specialty." Or livers, stomachs, kidneys - the list of what had been taken from Yeegar was long.

"They are," he agreed silkily, still running a teasing finger up and down his right arm. "But Bookmen have no hearts, isn't that true?"

Lavi was expecting it and still jumped when the Noah's hand closed around his arm, squeezing only lightly, but enough. He tried to breathe through it, hating every admittance, and Tyki's face was suddenly much closer, his breath warm on his right ear.

"Rhode is very dear to me. She is more than a friend, she is my family. What you did to her did not please me."

Is. Present tense. Lavi felt his eye widen, frozen in place but for his panting. She was still alive? They'd watched her disintegrate, there was no way-

And he'd seen Allen exorcise the Noah from Tyki Mikk, or at least he thought he had.

Was it even possible to kill Noah, then . . .?

"Oh yes," Tyki purred, correctly interpreting his shock. "She is alive and well, though her sights are still set upon Allen Walker. However, as her uncle," and his fingers tightened again, "I am a bit less distracted, and I do not approve of the way you treated her."

Lavi fought for his voice. Tyki was going to kill him, there was no way around that now, the knowledge was useless and yet he wanted it anyway. "H-how-"

He heard the Noah's lips sliding over his teeth, his mouth was so close. "You didn't think she would risk her life in a game, did you?"

But . . . she had, he was certain of it, he had injured her with her own dream, it was her Noah powers that had inflicted that damage, not his Innocence. Was she only injured? But then why did he see her disintegrate? Was that truly not her real body?

"But she will be very angry with me if I don't give you the same option she did." The realization seemed to startle the Noah, and Tyki pulled back, releasing his arm. The relief was almost as sharp as the bones grating together had been. Lavi blinked away the odd white blobs that threatened to overtake his vision, gasping for breath, making out only a dark face with a friendly white smile. "So let's play a game, shall we, Bookman junior?"

The Noah said nothing else, apparently waiting for his response, and Lavi tried to catch his breath. The arm was still at his throat, and his legs were shaking badly enough he wasn't sure he'd be standing without the help. Surely the Noah wasn't waiting for him to agree . . . ?

"If you win, I'll let you go," Tyki offered, the grin never slipping. "I won't leave you your Innocence, of course, but . . . you are a Bookman in training, are you not? There is something of nearly equal value I could give you."

Lavi gave him a wary look, but he had no choice. Accept the game or die. He was probably going to die anyway, but at least this bought him time, opportunity-

There was no sound from the springhouse but the quickly flowing water. No sign that Kanda had actually made it out before he was scalded to death. His opportunities were limited to the fact that he could hit the Noah's knees with his own.

"I'm listening."

Tyki's eyes seemed to grow lighter still, or perhaps his own eyesight was clearing. "I'm counting on it." Again he leaned in, and this time Lavi felt contact everywhere. The Noah was literally pinning him with his body, his knee slipping between Lavi's to lean against the wall behind him. Giving him the opportunity to fight back . . ?

Again, warm breath against his ear. Like any human. His brain recorded the words, refusing to allow his emotion to cloud the memory of what he was hearing, and when the Noah was done, he pulled back only enough that Lavi could see him out of the corner of his left eye.

Lavi remained motionless against the wall. That . . . that was . . .

"Now, wouldn't that be useful for a Bookman to know? Or the Exorcists, if you are sharing your information with them freely." His voice oozed molten sugar. "Isn't that worth surviving for?"

Lavi took a few more open-mouthed breaths, then licked his lips. "So what's the game?"

Tyki didn't move a muscle. "What I just told you is a truth known to none but us Noah and the Millennium Earl. It should be communicated to your clan by a fully fledged Bookman, not his lowly apprentice. Prove that you're a Bookman." The Noah was smiling again, and even in the dim lighting Lavi could see it wasn't a human expression. "Prove to me there is no heart within you for me to take."

Kanda. He'd go and get Kanda, if he was still alive, and use him. The other teen healed quickly, and Tyki probably didn't know that. There was a chance, a small chance-

"Don't tell me you're . . . still angry about the mole comment."

The Noah threw back his head and laughed, loud and long. "My, my, you're telling me that was just a show, put on for the Exorcists? To put them at ease, believe you are a comrade? You truly feel no anger towards me for what happened to Cheating Boy A?"

Lavi tried to relax under the Noah's grip, tried to regain a little of his composure. "You saw Bookman doing the same."

Tyki cocked his head to the side, listening to something far off that Lavi couldn't hear. "Maybe I did see some emotion from the Bookman," he pondered. "It would be hard to record from one side or the other without gaining the trust of your subjects. Very well, Bookman junior, we'll play another way."

_Go and get him. There's not much time left. Go!_

"Your companion is surely drowned, and there is none here but you and me. Show me your lack of emotion. Show me how little you feel."

Hiding his hatred of the Noah was doable, and Lavi tilted his chin up just slightly, even though it gave the Noah clearer access to his throat. Was that the test? Using up the time Kanda had left? Forcing him not to suggest that he go check, forcing him not to beg for the other's life? "And how exactly do you want me to do that?"

Forcing him to weigh the life of an Exorcist against the information he had just gotten?

"You obviously feel pain, like any human." Tyki made his point by crushing him into the wall until he gasped. "But you claim not to be afraid of me. Bookmen can suppress their fears entirely, record things impartially. All you have to do is record this encounter. Do that, and I will agree you have no heart."

Lavi's stomach sank into ice despite the steam in the room.

"It's a bit warm in here, don't you think?" Tyki raised his free left hand, and with a wet slurp a large, striped butterfly blistered out of his bare wrist. "Tease, open that window, would you?"

It was certainly a golem; its back bore an Akuma-like skull that chattered at the Noah in indecipherable language, then fluttered on a steam current toward the window. He knew they ate people, but glass was news-

And then his soaked bandana was blown off his face entirely by displaced air as thousands of Tease left the Noah's body. Their wings were as sharp as razors, they sliced his cheekbone and jaw as they poured forth, and the cuts were so clean he didn't feel the first droplet of blood leave his body until the last mechanical butterfly had passed through the ruins of the window and the windowframe, opening a huge hole in the wall. He could actually see the moon now.

And he could see the Noah far better, as if he had stepped into a spotlight. Tyki gave him a pleasant smile. "Much better. Though in hindsight perhaps I should have just taken us outside. Now that the Tease are awake it would be cruel of me to deny them their supper."

It took everything in him not to show anything. The villagers. That many Tease would wipe out the entire town.

Was what he knew now worth their lives?

But Bookman's voice grated in his head, too many times he'd had that thought, and too many times he'd gotten his answer. Would the Noah actually call them back if he asked? The image of Suman disintegrating into Tease flashed through his mental eye, and Lavi had his answer.

The game had already started, and the Noah never promised him anything if he lost.

Tyki shifted slightly away, as if to get a better look at his face. "You will let them all be consumed? But let's see how you do when you hear their reaction to your decision." Tyki sighed, languidly rooting around in his coat for a cigarette, which he placed between his lips. Once there, he began an unhurried search for a match, all the while his eyes - they were almost golden, with a round black pupil - never left Lavi's face.

And Lavi schooled his breathing and stared steadily back.

Once the match was lit and the Noah had his first breath of smoke, he let it out with an amused hmph. "It will take them some time to cover the distance. Perhaps some conversation, Bookman junior? Are there some questions you have for me?"

Of course. Give him every opportunity to give his emotions away. Lavi thought back to Rhode, to Deak, and let his lips twist with apathy. "Thousands. Are there any you would answer?"

At that the Noah grinned broadly. "I have given you a great deal already, haven't I? But you have given me the same. Two pieces of Innocence and the life of an Exorcist, even if you should win." He glanced back at the springhouse in mock regret. "Your fellow's death was quite unpleasant. I wonder if the sounds he made were anything like a lobster in the cooking pot."

Lavi didn't even twitch. "You know that sound is actually air escaping their shell, right?"

"Are you suggesting it's not disagreeable for them?"

Lavi shrugged, as best he was able, and confirmed that he could indeed touch every part of the Noah that was touching him. He was one arm down and the Noah were known for their superhuman strength - which Tyki had already demonstrated, and now that he thought about it his scalp was smarting like mad - but it was still something. He could probably get one hit in before the Noah didn't want to touch him, then he could dart through him, maybe the Noah would even let him make it to the hole-

But then what? He had no Innocence. He couldn't even hit this Noah more than once without it, and he would never survive the dive to get Ozuchi Kozuchi. He couldn't help Kanda. There was no escape here but whatever the Noah would grant him.

"I don't actually cook or eat them. Shellfish allergy." A lie, but perhaps Tyki would try to torture him with shrimp, and since he wasn't Allen Walker, that would be bearable.

"Ah," Tyki said, with a hint of real regret in his voice. "You're missing out, young Bookman. Some of the most delicious meals I've eaten contain our friends from the sea. In Spain there is a truly excellent little _fonda_, family owned for a century. Agueda Delavega makes the most delicate shellfish paella with fregola . . ." He trailed off, actually licking his bottom lip at the memory. "You did eat this evening, did you not? As this is a spa, perhaps there is something suitable for a quick evening meal here on site."

Polite dinner conversation. "I'm not hungry," he said levelly.

"Ah yes, the arm. How could I have forgotten." Tyki shifted, keeping him pinned more by way of his leg and chest than his arm, and he took another drag from the cigarette. "Pain turns my stomach as well. It was a long time after the Earl put an end to Cross Marian's attack that I felt able to eat."

Pleasant conversation with a Noah was bound to end sooner or later, and Lavi gave him a bland look. Tyki's lips quirked around the cigarette.

"Let me ask you a question, Bookman junior. Do you know why I take my enemy's heart?"

"You miss the one you used to have?"

Tyki gave him the expected laugh. It sounded surprisingly sincere, as if he truly was enjoying their conversation. Then again, he was the Noah of Pleasure. Pleasure could be found in almost anything; vices such as cigarettes and alcohol, a job well done, companionship - he made a distinction between friends and family, so perhaps there was some leverage there - and obviously food. It was no surprise he would be enjoying this, both the conversation and the 'game.'

"I still have a heart, Bookman junior. Can you not feel it?" He moved the arm pinning his captive's throat, so that his wrist lay warm and smooth against Lavi's jaw, and sure enough, he could feel the other's pulse, slow and steady. It also bent his head just a bit higher, exposing just a bit more of his throat. Putting him in a more submissive position.

He'd give him credit. The Noah seemed to know as much about human psychology as Bookmen. Both of them were masters of manipulating it, which cut his chances of successfully fooling the Noah.

And that was clearly the point Tyki was making.

"I think I feel yours as well," the Noah continued, cocking his head now to the other side. "Haven't you wondered what I do with them? The hearts that I take?"

With his head tilted further against the wall, any swallowing would be very loud, so he didn't. "I assume you feed them to the Tease." They had certainly never found Daiysa Barry's, or any of the others' Tyki killed that night in Barcelona. And he hadn't taken Allen's, though he'd threatened to-

Tyki's goldenrod eyes bored into his. "In a way, you're correct. Once I've sated my own appetite, I give them what remains."

This time Lavi wasn't able to hide his surprise, and he actually saw the Noah's eyes change, right before his own. Suddenly the thing looking at him wasn't quite as human as it had been a moment ago.

"You . . . eat them?"

"Hardly, boy. Why would I put such impurities into my own body?" His teeth flashed in the moonlight. "Perhaps you're too young to follow. Have you yet had a woman, little Bookman?"

Trying to shock him with sex? He scoffed. "Isn't Lulubell the Noah of Lust?"

"Lust comes in many forms. In Lulubell's case, she has insatiable desire for power, for stature, for the Earl's respect, even for a decent manicurist. For her the pleasure is in taking and having. For me, the pleasure itself is everything."

So he was saying-

"All the organs in the human body remain responsive even after they've been removed, did you know? Kidneys still try to filter, even when they take in only air. Your lungs continue to try to breathe when they have no body to feed oxygen. It takes them a while to realize what has happened. Not unlike the people they once belonged to." Tyki's grin became fixed and unnatural. "Do you know what your heart does when it's removed?"

Trying to shock him and succeeding. It was a heart, the heart of an Exorcist, for God's sake! And he was- was-

"Ah, I can tell from your expression you do not approve." He took another pull on the cigarette, expelling the smoke with his words. "The feeling is exquisite, though very short-lasting, as you can guess. But the best part for me is the tissue between the chamber walls. I'm really not certain how openly sexuality is discussed behind cloistered walls, but you're a worldly Bookman, are you not? Surely you must know something about the opposite sex."

Lavi worked very hard to keep his breathing even. Deak would not care. Deak would only note the physiological aspects and agree that a hymen and the septum of a heart would have something in common, though obviously the septum would be more robust, which would not be a problem for someone of a Noah's strength-

Deak would not be upset at all by this line of conversation. So why the hell was Lavi?

Because he knew those hearts. Deak had never been asked to know someone's heart, and Lavi had. He knew Daiysa Barry. He knew Suman and the other five Tyki killed that day, he ate with them and worked with them and spoke with them and recorded them. He knew those hearts. And Tyki had not just taken them, he had sullied them. Destroyed them utterly.

"Enough to understand your inference," Lavi murmured, letting his eye relax back to its normal size and taking care to slip back into the role of Deak, just a little. "Though deriving pleasure from taking a woman's virginity seems largely a cultural phenomenon. You were born in southern Europe, right? I'd guess Spain or Portugal based on your coloring when you're marauding as a human."

It wasn't a guess; the clan knew where each and every human that had become a Noah came from, as it was usually something the Earl couldn't hide, no matter how many witnesses he made disappear. They tracked them carefully, since there must be a pattern to where new Noah spawned, and it must mean that eventually the humans the Noah previously infested died somehow-

Tyki leaned back, and for the first time there was little enough pressure on him that he could escape. He had scored his first win on the Noah, who looked more than a little surprised.

"Who am I speaking with now?" he wondered aloud, grabbing Lavi's chin so quickly he hadn't even seen the Noah move. "It seems you have changed before my eyes and I have not noticed."

Lavi quirked an eyebrow. "You wanted me to prove I'm a Bookman, didn't you? Yet how can I do that to someone who is so obviously ignorant of what that means?"

Tyki's thoughtful frown smoothed into something else, and he was more human again. "I had no idea they conditioned their own so completely at such a young age. You surprise me, Bookman junior. Perhaps I shouldn't go easy on you after all."

A faint sound carried through the hole in the wall, along with the first breath of cooler air, and the Noah paused, stroking Lavi's chin as thoughtfully as if it were his own. "It appears the Tease have arrived," he observed unnecessarily.

There was nothing to say to that so Lavi said nothing, and he hated his ears for straining towards the sounds. Recording them, how long it took the village to be emptied based on the two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two Tease that had left the Noah and descended on them.

Their Finder was in town, he would call for help. If Allen had ever been here, he would use the Ark. There was a chance, a small chance some of them would be saved. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it. Not without his Innocence.

There was nothing he could do.

"Your composure is to be commended," Tyki murmured, still stroking his chin. "I assume you have also been conditioned to withstand pain, no?"

He knew it was coming but it still hurt. Tyki reached right through him, impossibly, twisting his right arm behind his back and shoving his body against it. He screamed so hard he choked, so hard he couldn't breathe. But he could bear it. He'd had worse. He'd been burning in the fire of his own seal and had had the discipline to keep himself there, keep the seal activated. This wouldn't kill him.

His body couldn't handle it as gracefully as his mind, though, and he barely had the awareness to lean forward before he vomited. It did not make him feel better, and he was certain it hadn't landed on the Noah.

"Dear me, that must have hurt quite a bit," Tyki purred, holding his shaking frame absolutely still. If the Noah wasn't supporting him he would have dropped like a stone. "Perhaps it's just as well you skipped dinner. I do hate wasting food. There is too much hunger in the world."

Lavi kept panting, eventually catching his breath enough to spit. He hated puking up bile, it burned his throat worse than any indigestion.

"Do be a bit more quiet if you can, Bookman junior. We can't hear them dying if you don't."

Lavi blinked several times, surprised to find his head was still fallen forward, resting against the Noah's chest. The fine silk felt quite hot against his skin, and Lavi picked himself up slowly, trying to support himself. Heaven only knew when the Noah would drop him, and every little shift was agony to his arm. He never knew it could hurt so badly. It would be better if the Noah had just ripped it off entirely, at least then he'd been in shock-

Lavi smiled at himself as he imagined Deak's snort. He was shaking, couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. He was already in shock. Best way to ruin his composure.

The Noah let him pull away, until he was standing straight again despite the added angle on his arm, until he was looking at his face again. He swallowed hard, forcing his lungs to cooperate, and kept eye contact.

And waited.

He received a faint smirk. "Very impressive, little Bookman. Tell me, how much don't you feel, _exactly_?" He removed his support, as Lavi knew he would, leaving only a thigh between his own and his hand around his right wrist _through_ his chest, keeping his arm against the wall. Pinned very well, actually; he couldn't even think about moving without wanting to puke again.

And then the Noah's other hand was in his stomach, the faintest impression, like a wisp of the smoke that was lazily leaving his cigarette. "You see, there are many different types of pain. What you feel now is only moderately intense compared to what your nerves are capable of carrying. Shall I demonstrate the range for you?"

Giving him an out.

Lavi shook his head, taking short, shallow breaths in an effort to get enough air to speak. "That's up t-to you."

"You're right," Tyki agreed, his voice oddly husky, and then Lavi realized that his arm was insignificant to his torso. What was an extremity when your core could feel like this. If he hadn't completely trusted that the Noah would keep his word and not fatally damage him, he would have thought he was dying.

Tyki's voice was far away, and he wasn't sure if the distortion was his losing consciousness or that he couldn't hear over his own cries. "This is equivalent to a fatal bout of colic in a large pack animal. I have twisted your intestines, which cut off the blood flow among other things. If I were to remove my hand, without immediate surgery, you would die. It's quite unpleasant, is it not?"

His body was writhing quite without him, he felt it every time he ground against his own arm, and he realized that he was an idiot. There was no way he could withstand this, not even for a moment. If this was just a taste, if he had to wait for all the minutes it would take the villagers to die-

No.

He was stronger than this. He was a Bookman. If he gave in now, he had all the pain and those people, Kanda, would have died for nothing.

"Now perhaps you will sympathize with the beasts when they roll in their stalls, seeking relief as you do now." Tyki's voice was even further away. "This pain would eventually fade, becoming an ache that would eat the base of your spine. It brings with it convulsions as well . . . I wonder if there is a way for me to help you experience that without actually killing you. Shall we search for it together, little Bookman?"

He waited patiently for an answer, but Lavi could not speak. The pain didn't abate, just grew slowly worse and he knew what was happening, lack of oxygen to the tissues, this was damage, not yet fatal but he couldn't afford it. He nodded, only realizing he was crying when he felt the tears smeared on his cheek by the Noah's lapels.

"A Bookman would want to know," Tyki agreed easily, and the sharpness faded to the point that Lavi was aware of the rest of himself again, all but sitting on the Noah's thigh, his legs shaking so badly he had no hope of standing on his own again. He was completely at the Noah's mercy and there was no hiding it.

And maybe five minutes had passed. Lavi groaned at his observational skills and pressed his face harder into the coat in front of him, figuring he might as well enjoy the support while he had it.

"Let's see . . ." Tyki made a show of rooting around in his abdomen, and Lavi refused to watch. Even with his face buried in the other's chest, listening to his steady, slow heart, he could hear beyond. He could hear the riverwater splashing into the spring, he could hear something even over that, almost like a whistling teakettle.

_Please, Toma. Put them in a talisman field. Protect them._

"Ah, yes. This should do nicely," Tyki purred, and Lavi's spine stiffened involuntarily, causing him to jerk straight though he would have sworn he didn't have the strength to do it a scant second ago. He crushed his arm against the wall again and this time he was sure he tore a vocal chord. His spine was spasming uncontrollably, and his legs were jelly. Every tremor shifted his arm, and his groin burned as his balls were flattened painfully between his body's and the Noah's.

"Were you conditioned against all forms of torture, little Bookman?"

Suddenly that uneasy tingling pain became clear and he recognized it for what it was. Knew exactly where the Noah's hand was, and what it was doing.

"We could try something different if you tire of this one."

A finger traced the base of his spine, literally the corded nerves themselves, and his body responded in the only way it knew how, bashing the back of his head against the wall as his spine arched. Muscles throughout his body strained and tore themselves in his contortions, and he nearly blacked out from the strike alone, there was far too much data inundating his stunned brain. The Noah repeated the gesture and Lavi heard himself shudder out a whimper, incapable of doing anything more. Every sensation in his body was intensified beyond bearing. His arm might as well have been stabbed with a million nails. The wall was digging valleys into his flesh. His clothes were chafing off his skin. The heat of the Noah's thigh between his legs was burning him, his testicles were being torn off his body.

"Dear me, what a violent reaction," the Noah observed, his voice deafening, nearly bursting his eardrums. "Perhaps I've taken things a bit too far. But please don't think you can leave that easily."

His face was taken between the Noah's hands, for the first time no longer pinned down in any way, and he could do nothing but slump against the wall, fully supported by one leg and two gentle hands on his face.

"If you stop responding, I will have to assume you've grown bored of this game and given up."

He just kept gasping, the feeling oddly muted, and his face was shaken, so gently he almost didn't feel it.

"Look at me, little Bookman."

Opening his eye, that he could do. Tyki smiled at him, a reward for good behavior, and wiped his cheek. "I've made you cry, little Bookman. And I've made you scream. But tell me, have I made you feel?"

What was he looking for? Hate? Fear? Lavi couldn't even pretend to have ahold of himself, yet whatever weakness it was the Noah wanted, he clearly didn't see. "It hurts quite a bit, doesn't it."

And then he threw him back against the wall.

Lavi felt his mouth stretching open, but it didn't seem like he had the breath for screaming anymore, and again, whatever the Noah was looking for, he didn't get it.

"Can you no longer speak? Have I hurt you too badly?"

Lavi kept blinking, well aware that he was dangerously close to fainting, between the first headstrike and the second he was surely concussed. Wouldn't it be his luck to not remember, when all this was said and done. Survive and let them die and not remember why he'd done it.

"What a lovely smile, little Bookman."

And then some of the pain simply-

Simply vanished.

"There's another extreme to torture, that few people use. Few people are as good at it as I am. Would you like to experience that as well, little Bookman?"

No. It probably had to do with bone pain, which pretty much no one could do as well as he could. And his arm, god his arm-

"Are you still playing, little Bookman?"

No. No more playing. Anything else would kill him, or else he'd pass out and that was the same thing.

"Are you awake, boy?"

His pelvis jerked forward on its own, and he felt his eye open wide as the feeling was immediately drowned by his arm. Surely that wasn't what he'd thought, surely-

"There you are. For a moment I thought you'd given up."

Lavi continued to blink in an effort to keep his eye open. He had to. Had to.

"You aren't going to break just yet, are you, little Bookman?"

And then it happened again. Sensation that was certainly not pain raced up his spine, already sensitized from its previous treatment, and he screamed soundlessly, his throat unable to make more than a squeak.

"I get that reaction quite a bit," the Noah chuckled, pressing against him, keeping him upright. "This is a more pleasant way to spend the time, don't you agree?"

Lavi shoved his head against the wall lest his body do it for him, pinning his arm now on purpose in an effort to feel that pain. He needed to focus on something and that was the sharpest thing around, besides what Tyki was doing now. If he felt it, he would be overwhelmed. He would pass out. It wasn't even a violation of Tyki's rules, he had to record the encounter and he couldn't do that unconscious. But surely this would be as bad as strangling him-

"There are practices all over the world that do what I am doing to you now," Tyki told him, his eyes a very bright yellow as his fingers brushed against something Lavi could only guess was his prostate. "But due to my . . . rather unique abilities, I discovered something. Would you like to know what?"

No. No, he certainly did not.

"If everyone could do what I can do, they would know there's something even nicer."

Much like everything else Tyki had done to him, there was no ignoring it. There was no distraction. He could feel the broken ends of his forearm grinding together and the sensation felt _wonderful_. His clothes brushed maddeningly, teasingly against his skin and he wanted more. He was writhing against both the wall and the Noah, who had placed the most perfect leg between his own and granted him such an exquisite pressure and place to generate friction, all at the same time-

"Do you feel that, little Bookman?" He could feel Tyki's own arousal pressed hard against his left thigh, enjoying his squirming, and while the aloof part of his brain knew exactly what was going on, and why, and what it meant, the rest of him was helpless.

"Unfortunately, I cannot experience it myself, so I am hoping you can summarize the experience for me," the Noah continued, almost lazily. He hadn't even lost his cigarette, Lavi's eye could only take in the moonlight and the glowing end of the tobacco, only half-spent. All this time had probably been less than ten minutes. "Can you do that?"

Lavi felt his eye rolling back, and crushing his back against his arm only increased his pleasure, only ground his erection against the Noah, who was returning the favor. Somehow everything was backwards, it should be the agony he felt before but it wasn't-

"No?"

Distantly Lavi realized he must have shaken his head in his effort to stay conscious, but it was over now, it didn't matter. He was going to come and he was going to lose consciousness and his heart. He knew exactly why the Noah was pleased, and how he intended to get his.

And he didn't care, as long as the Noah didn't stop.

So he did.

As quickly as his body had confused pain with pleasure, it rightened itself again, and everything the Noah had done to him, and he had done to himself, came back three times worse. He hadn't thought he had another one in him but he screamed, guttural and low and the same sound he'd heard a thousand times on the battlefield. The last sound so many men ever made. Sensation, even agonizing sensation, was too much for his body and he came painfully hard, an orgasm with no pleasure, thrusting into the Noah's thigh and crushing himself against his arm, that felt as if shards of the bone were protruding through the skin.

He was reasonably sure he lost consciousness and was brought back by the pain without the Noah even noticing, as he was pinned again with an arm across his throat, just as they had started, and the Noah was looking at him with a freshly lit cigarette between his lips. Only something uncomfortably hard pressed into the top of his left thigh told him that it had really happened. Otherwise the Noah had recreated everything perfectly.

Perfectly. The moon had barely moved.

He couldn't hear over the pounding of blood in his ears, a pounding he was sure the Noah could detect with no trouble. But still he tried to focus, tried, because he was still alive, he remembered all of it-

"So what did you feel, little Bookman?"

Lavi had no answer, the answer was obvious, just gave him as steady a look as he could manage. Tyki seemed content to let him think things over, and when his blood pressure died back to something a little more normal, when he stopped gasping so hard, he found he could still hear it, that far-off teakettle boiling over.

"It doesn't seem like the Tease are finished," the Noah observed, swallowing some smoke and clearly enjoying it before he released it into the strange mix of steam and fresh air. "And you don't seem to want to converse anymore, little Bookman. Shall we go for another round?"

He knew the Noah would wait for his affirmation, wait as they listened to the dying, and Lavi concentrated on staying conscious, taking the opportunity of a respite no matter how brief. It took him a while to notice; he didn't even think about it until Tyki glanced at the pocketwatch in his left hand and replaced it in his vest, bringing his cigarette back to his lips with the other. Lavi's first thought was confirmation that Tyki was right-handed, and then the arm pinning his throat spread a bit, warm and fluid. Even when he saw it he didn't comprehend what he was looking at until it took his chin, which was swollen from the punch and nearly crawled off his face at the odd sensation of Tyki's touch-

Just the tip, as black as any shadow in the room, swept over his eyepatch, and a second tentacle peeked at him over Tyki's right shoulder. "I could make it more interesting, if you like," the Noah offered, prompting him for a response. His eyes were gold but he still looked far more human-

Then everything changed. The shape of his eyes, the way they bulged at him above an impossible grin, his teeth, even the grey of his skin. Suddenly he was absolutely _not_ a human, and Lavi fully understood what Tyki meant when he said he had a white side.

This wasn't it.

Lavi just stared at him, trying to suppress everything that he could when the tentacle pinning his throat, winding up the side of his face, started to idly toy with the cord of his eyepatch, snapping it against the skin of his ear. Tyki could do this all night, could do worse than he'd done. No one would find them, not if the town was wiped out. He could do it for as long as it took to win-

Which was his plan all along. Rhode had actually played a game because she knew they would be killed by the Ark's destruction no matter the outcome. Tyki had never intended to give him an opportunity.

This wasn't a game at all. This was punishment for hurting Rhode. This was nothing more than a way to encourage him to bear more pain before he died.

"There it is," the Noah crooned, stroking his chin in a parody of what he had done with his hands. The hands that were now below his field of vision, running dangerously sharp nails across his chest, down his side, searching. Abruptly something white-hot bore into left hip, stealing all his breath, and his gasp brought with it the smell of the cigarette and his own burned flesh. Tyki - or perhaps truly the Noah - laughed, gripping his jaw hard enough to hurt, and Lavi could not hide his flinch.

"You remember that day?" Even his voice was not the same. "I do, Bookman." He grinned toothily, dragging his talons up to his chest again, and Lavi pushed as far back from those fingers as he could, even when they passed into his chest harmlessly. The bones in his forearm rasped together again and he clenched his teeth, trying to keep from acknowledging the pain. The tentacle around his chin squeezed it in response, forcing his mouth open. Forcing him to cry out or have his jaw ripped right off.

"Now will you say that you're not afraid?" the Noah murmured, cocking his head, and then his features were suddenly far more human again, frighteningly so, or maybe it was his eyesight getting worse.

This was it.

He'd never get to tell Bookman. The village had been wiped out for nothing.

Tyki's face came closer, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. "Though it's not your fear I was waiting for. Your master would have lasted hours, you know. But then again, he would never have hoped from the beginning."

Lavi recorded every nuance of his eyes, his face, the way the corners of his mouth softened when the wisps in his own chest tightened.

"I'm going to enjoy this heart of yours, _Exorcist_."

And then the Noah tore himself away, almost taking his face with him, and something inside _pulled_, and there was no leg supporting him anymore.

Lavi fell.

He fell so long he was honestly wondering if he was already dead, had died before he hit the ground and so he'd never actually stop. But he did, with a sudden violent jerk that was not a landing as much as a falling in a new direction, and then he was enveloped with an unwelcome warmth that crawled into his nose and mouth and ears, so heavy that it made him weightless.

And then Tyki's arm was around his throat once more.

Lavi jerked in shock, he was too hot and his arm, it was floating away from his body, it was moving, was being moved. Warm liquid crept into his mouth each time he tried to gasp, and this time he didn't even try to stop himself from heaving. His heart was pounding in his chest, but it was still there, _in his chest_, he was still breathing and seeing and hearing and remembering. And choking.

He was still alive.

His left arm still worked; he brought it up, grasping at the steel around his neck, ever tugging him upward, he could never catch up to that pressure and there was nothing but a roar in his ears.

"-avi, stop-!"

Water. It was water.

Lavi blinked repeatedly, still seeing nothing but darkness and the briefest blinks of light. The roof of the bathhouses. The pools were overflowing into their connecting canals because so much of the river had been diverted into them. It was the current, carrying them through far faster than he would have thought possible-

And suddenly it was the starry night sky he saw, the moon.

His arm hit something, it felt like a branch or a root and it was unbearable. He shook his head for all he was worth, seeking any kind of escape from whoever was holding him, and the previous words filtered into his pain-hazed brain.

Lavi.

Tyki had called him many things, but Lavi wasn't one of them.

. . . but no, that was impossible-

"Shit!" It was hoarse and winded, and the annoyed quality was distinctive. Distinctively not the smooth, polished banter of a gentleman. "Lavi-"

He paused, stopping the process of digging his fingernails through the arm that he now realized was keeping his face above water. Kanda had to have been half-cooked if not worse.

As crabby as a lobster would have been.

He laughed, suddenly and pitifully, until there were more tears in his eyes than water, but he tried to speak just the same. "Tyki-"

The banks that allowed the spring water back to the river were a bit wider than the canal, so this water wasn't as deep, and as soon as Kanda could stop them he did, Lavi felt it when he was swept into the other's body. He couldn't feel much through his own still-shaking frame, but the steel arm around his collarbone, now, didn't seem to be in much better shape than he was.

"I only wounded him. Can you move?"

And then something was being pressed against the top of his left hand, still hanging onto Kanda for support.

Lavi glanced down, unable to believe what he was seeing. It wasn't possible. "How-"

"Che. Can you move or not?"

"Run if you like," a voice called, and very shortly its owner strode through the wall beside the channel, looking none the worse for wear. "Just don't look behind you."

The second the Noah had spoken, Kanda had submerged Ozuchi Kozuchi, and Lavi got the message, taking his Innocence from the other teen underwater. Tyki didn't realize he had it back.

Kanda didn't realize he was too bad off to use it. He also didn't realize why Tyki had told him not to look back.

"Tease," he breathed, swallowing and suddenly not the least bit hysterical. "Too many. Can you hold on?"

The other Exorcist seemed to be holding his breath. "Can you?"

Fantastic. Neither one of them were up for this. But then again, they would surely die if they tried to fight. "Not really. You ready?"

"Tease! Just in time for dessert."

He actually felt the wind of them before he heard them, and Lavi closed his eye and felt Kanda's boot brace just beneath his own. His plan was to hang from the hammer by one arm and one leg, and it seemed like Yuu was thinking the same thing.

"Extend."

His dangling right wrist hit the bank due to the angle of their sudden flight and Lavi pressed his forehead into the hammer's handle, willing himself not to faint. Again, the Tease were so sharp the cuts didn't really hurt, they were catchings on his skin that would bleed later, and long. Ozuchi Kozuchi always seemed to respond faster when he bled on his Innocence, an observation he had not shared with Gramps, particularly not after the crystallizing Innocence discussion, and that made it harder to control. He opened his eye only when he knew they were through the cloud of Tease, immediately bringing them back down to the woods about half a mile from their starting location.

"Lavi-"

He dumped them unceremoniously into a tree, hefting the handle and recalling the head of the hammer as fast as he could, though he could no longer properly see. To travel far at all with his Innocence so close to a Noah was just plain stupid. The head of the hammer had to remain stationary while they rode. Tyki would surely destroy it and easily catch up.

He might easily catch up anyway.

The hammer retracted so quickly it slammed into their tree, and Kanda's arm snaked out and grabbed his dangling wrist as they started to fall. Lavi let the heaviest part of the hammer naturally drop toward the ground, hardly able to make the command audible. His voice was getting worse, not better; Tyki might as well have taken his voicebox for all the volume he got out of it.

"Extend."

He let them go a mile before he repeated the dismount, and realized that he wasn't going to manage another one. Kanda changed his own position until he was sitting astride rather than hanging below, and Lavi reluctantly agreed that it was that or fall off. Yuu put his arm down in his lap so it was not flapping freely but it was not still, nothing could hold it still in the cold wind, cutting through his clothes and traveling into every nerve via his spine. His right leg seemed permanently entangled with the hammer's handle, though, no threat of falling, and Lavi kept only one thought in his head.

_Extend_.

"Lights."

It could have been a minute or an hour, and when Lavi opened his eye he picked it out instantly, an oasis in the dark. A large town, possibly a small city. He had to work hard to rotate the head of the hammer, usually done with nothing more than a swing of his leg, but his legs were uncooperative. Rather than be subtle and land on the outskirts of town, he brought them down on a roof far closer to the center, arresting their motion so that Yuu could slide nervelessly off the handle, and he lowered himself further, until his legs naturally folded beneath him.

He would never be warm again.

Yuu was surprisingly still as they waited for the hammer to retract, and Lavi realized they'd gone quite a long distance. Far from their Finder, far from anyone that might be looking for them.

Kanda hadn't batted an eye about them abandoning the place to Tyki. Hadn't batted an eye at running.

He didn't bother to turn his head, and he rasped air over his tongue so he could be heard. "You find the Innocence?"

Kanda was as exhausted as he was, if not worse. He didn't even scoff at the question. "Yes."

Once Ozuchi Kozuchi was toy-sized again, Lavi decided it was too much effort to actually stop sitting on it. Or to stand. There was nothing wrong with his legs, except that they were attached to his spine, which was not working properly. They were stiff and getting worse, and moving reminded him that he'd pulled almost every muscle he had.

Including his heart, which was still pounding away numbly under his breast, under a coating of cold sweat. Tyki had touched it, even if he hadn't actually taken it. There was something wrong with it. Wrong with him.

"C'mon, Yuu."

They must have looked the pair, stumbling to the side of the roof and sliding to the street using his Innocence. Landing jarred his arm no matter how careful he was, there was just no good way to wrap it, not with what they had, and he paused by the wall to expel the pain through his mouth. Pain, as it turned out, was a frothy white, unsubstantial and rank, and he was glad there was no blood.

"Lavi."

He remained as he was, temple pressed to the rough brick, waiting for the dizziness to pass. He had a feeling it wasn't going to, now that he had stopped concentrating on the single task of keeping his Innocence activated and was focused on walking and breathing and seeing and hearing and decided where the nearest hospital was, his brain had just about had it.

"Don't s'ppose you're in any condition to help?"

And Kanda probably wasn't, but he still had too many clothes on to see anything but a blotchy face, and hair that had lost its corded tie, and Mugen still attached to his back, an intricate hairpin bulging in the pack on the back of his belt. They leaned into each other, as one capable of walking. Once they got their rhythm down, Lavi was pretty sure they could have gone on til morning with inertia alone, but a rather concerned-looking vagabond cradling a four day old loaf of moldy bread was able to give them directions to one of the most formidable-looking buildings Lavi had ever seen.

He and Kanda stared at it numbly, and Lavi swallowed several deep breaths. "Feeling better suddenly. Let's not-"

"Che."

Despite the façade, a thick grey limestone with roughly-hewn Corinthian columns and endless stairs, they had only struggled up the first dozen or so before staff came pouring out to help them. He supposed it wasn't that odd, that two young men would come staggering up to their front door in the middle of the night, but when they realized the extent of their injuries, realized they weren't simply drunk, everything changed.

Questions. Wheelchairs, a welcome change, and a pillow for his lap and his arm. Lavi nearly passed out when the head nurse, Gwendolyn rather than Gwen or Donnie or Lynn or Grendle, started to roll up his shirt sleeve.

"Please, do you have a telephone?"

"Of course, dear, we'll notify your family immediately. Where does it hurt?"

He shook his head, gently pushing her away from his arm. If she touched it even once more, he was going to scream. "I need to make a phone call. Is there one in the patient rooms?"

Lavi had to refuse treatment and nearly reverted to Deak before he could make them understand that he was going to use the phone, and despite their best efforts he found, as he was wheeled reluctantly into another room, that they had had little success with Kanda, either. He was walking, of all things, still fully clothed and damp and cold and still scratched from the Tease, and he looked dead on his feet.

And Lavi was certain that if an Akuma appeared it would be destroyed before he could even reach for his own Innocence.

"I'm very sorry, but can you leave the room for a moment?" The rasp added an edge he didn't intend.

"If you agree to let us keep you overnight," came the throaty reply, and Lavi felt himself smile for the first time in what felt like years. Bargaining with him. "Your dark-haired friend as well."

Kanda didn't react at all, his face stony and so blotched he looked almost piebald. Lavi didn't want to even consider how those burns must feel. "Thank you."

He waited until their curious hard-heeled footsteps had finally faded before he lurched from the wheelchair to the stationary chair beside the phone, and he heard Kanda hiss as he turned to open one of his pouches.

"I don't need a golem." Where was his? Last he'd seen the poor thing was the bathhouse, he might have accidentally left it behind. No matter; it would find him soon enough.

In fact, it could lead the Tease right to them, if Tyki was persistent enough.

Lavi dialed the numbers by heart, knowing the phone wasn't secure, and he let his head fall against the wall, pinning the headset to his shoulder so he didn't have to hold it up.

_"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor."_

Lavi let his eye drift closed. _"But even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it."_

Whoever had thought up this acknowledge response quote needed to get out once in a while.

_"Identify."_

Lavi heard Kanda shift against the door, still in the room, but he didn't care. The samurai had no idea what he was saying, and the language was too complicated for him to recall or repeat. _"The graceful tower rises high, a negative in the face of the dawn sky."_

He was slurring badly and he knew it. The extra effort he was putting into trying to speak was coming out of something else, and the wall was deliciously comfortable against his matted hair.

There was no other acknowledgement but there didn't need to be one. He gave the date, the time, and exactly what Tyki Mikk had told him. The slurring was hell on his accent, so he repeated it.

"_And there Noah built an altar and made an off-"_

"-offering to God, and when God smelled the offering he was displeased . . . excellent memory, little Bookman."

Lavi's eye flew open even as the lights were suddenly extinguished.


	2. Chapter 2

Wow. Over a hundred and thirty hits, and one review. Either everyone in this fandom lurks, or you guys just don't like my brand of Lavi torture too well. That's okay. Azab, this one's for you. If you guys still hate it after this chapter, then I guess I should just keep the rest to myself. ; )

--

There was a reason Kanda hadn't reacted.

His Innocence was still active, its light more white than blue, chillier and brittle. It illuminated the right side of his face, shocked and disbelieving, and the shadow that had wound sinuously around his chest, holding his arm and Mugen in a mocking salute.

Tyki already had him.

"There they are. I've missed those eyes, Exorcist," Tyki crooned, his voice just over Lavi's ear. "I think I'll take them."

He reached for the hammer, Ozuchi Kozuchi was on his hip as always, but he was far, far too late. Warm limbs snaked around him, worming between him and the chair, pinning him and squeezing sore muscles, and Lavi remained perfectly motionless. The arm - or some other limb - was around his throat again; he was paralyzed, all his breath had been stolen. How . . .?

" . . . stop . . ." It wasn't even a whisper, and the Noah behind him laughed.

Lavi noticed the phone being taken from him only peripherally, a memory rather than a feeling, and there was hot breath on his left ear, hot pain in his right arm. Before his eyes, Kanda tried and failed to gasp, his hair yanked back to force his chin up high. The samurai's legs trembled, his feet sliding on the tile floor in his efforts to move himself. Save himself. His lips ghosted the words, but without the ability to rotate his wrist at all, to slash the air and release his illusions, Mugen was unable to help him.

And then his face literally crawled, and his eyes began to bulge, just like Tyki's had when the Noah's influence became too strong.

Lavi turned away, away from Kanda, away from the mouth beside his ear. This was not a death Kanda would want him to see. "Stop."

"I didn't for Cheating Boy A. What makes you think I will for you?"

There was a strangled sound in front of him, and Lavi flinched when Mugen clattered to the floor. "STOP IT!!"

"Ne, how can you record what you're not even watching? That wasn't our arrangement."

There was the sickening sound of wet tissue tearing, but no cry to accompany it, and Lavi cringed, still struggling futilely to reach his Innocence. Kanda-

Oh god. Kanda.

"Don't want the memory of his death? I understand. But it's okay now."

There was no other sound, not of pain or of breaking bones or of scrabbling boots on the floor, and Tyki remained patient, stroking his cheek with something that might actually have been his hand. The tentacles continued to cradle him, caressing not unlike a mother might her infant son, sometimes ghosting beneath his clothes to touch his skin, reminding him. Lavi swallowed a sound when those sensations came too close to things better left untouched, but perhaps due to his lack of protest Tyki tested him, stroking every part of him. His body was getting accustomed to the pressure, his arm throbbing with less and less intensity, and Lavi shuddered as a chill ran up his spine.

Was one inside of him, like it was inside of Kanda? What was he doing, what could he do-

Tyki chuckled. "So timid. I wouldn't have thought it would be so easy to unsettle you, little Bookman. You've seen dead Exorcists before, haven't you?"

His chin was taken, gently this time, without pain, and when another limb wound familiarly around his hips he obeyed the pressure, he opened his eye. Kanda was standing right where he had been, he'd died standing. His eyes were the darkest Lavi had ever seen them because they weren't there, but his face was still pale and shocked, there was no blood. His chin was still held high, his jaw clamped shut in customary Kanda Yuu form.

And then something shifted in those wide-open voids, and Kanda's head plunged forward artificially limply, a rotted puppet with a cut string. As Tyki withdrew from the samurai's body, Lavi realized the tentacles hadn't just been squeezing his outsides, and his stomach clenched, too empty to do anything else, as Kanda Yuu was broken down like a party tent.

"The body is merely a sac of fluids, if you don't count the skeleton," the Noah murmured in his ear, trying to wipe bone that had been silently pulverized into paste from his appendages. "And though you have not called for him, an Akuma can wear him like this for a very short period of time. Shall I summon one?"

Lavi closed his eye, trying hard to control his breathing, and even through his eyelid he saw Mugen deactivate, plunging the room back into darkness. His arm barely twinged now, though his nausea was breathtaking, and he was curiously numb though he could hear the tentacles winding around him ever tighter, ever more invasive.

"You're shaking again, little Bookman. Are you cold?"

Never before had he felt such bone-chilling paralysis. It had to be more than fear. Tyki was already doing whatever he was going to do, he was already dead and he didn't even know it. The deepest pink light flared to life somewhere in the room, and he opened his eye again, just to confirm it, watching Mugen vanish into the shadows and spitting energy and come out a green-glowing gear.

Which floated on the darkness back to him. To the Noah.

"He seemed so distant, I doubt this could be the Heart. Your Innocence is here, yes?" Motion by his hip, but it was too dark to see what the Noah was up to, he couldn't make his head tilt, his eye move. As if he didn't know.

"No-" It was a whimper, just a breath. Speaking was intensely difficult, the numbness was making it hard to move, hard to breathe to his own pattern. Hard to vocalize even with his throat so torn. There was something wrong.

At least Kanda had died before he saw his precious Mugen destroyed.

"Does it mean something to you?" The arms around him squeezed a little, faintly, warmly, and he _felt_ his Innocence leave his side, not in sensation but in his soul. As if Ozuchi Kozuchi was a living companion, always with him, and had suddenly left a cold place in his bed.

Lavi struggled until it hurt again, until his arm throbbed again, and gained nothing but a breathy laugh against his temple. He had been pulled and arranged against the Noah almost as if they were reclining together, and as soon as he stopped his weak, difficult movements Tyki gave a little sigh of contentment. And then Kanda's Innocence was held right in front of his face, showing the silhouette of fingers, of Tyki's hand, before it was closed, hidden in a fist and energy that spat from between his fingers, actually striking Lavi's face. He flinched at the burn, flinched back into Tyki's silk blazer, hating the way his eye watered when nothing but the lightest greenish dust glittered in the air and was gone.

And then it truly was dark.

"As I thought." Tyki sounded disappointed. "Ne, don't you think it would be fitting if your Innocence was the Heart, little Bookman?" Lips pressed against his ear so that he could feel the Noah smile.

"It's the only one I'll take from you," he cooed, a mocking reassurance. "It will be your Clan that takes the other, the heart that I've given you. Will you fight them as hard as you fought me, I wonder? For it will be the end of you as you are."

Lavi turned away from the lips, the voice, and beside him there was a crackle of that same pink energy. The same energy that would strip his Innocence to its pure form, and then destroy it.

He would get to record how it felt to be forcibly unsynchronized from Innocence. How it felt for the wielder when the weapon was no more.

Lavi pressed his face further away, searching the darkness for anything to focus on besides the fading aches of his body, and something glittered at him from the empty room.

It was a pair of eyes, glaring at him from the blackness, pillowed between the matte skin of Tyki's new limbs.

Kanda's eyes.

Lavi jerked in the Noah's grip and Tyki began to laugh, manipulating the muscles to give the eyes the impression of sockets, the top ones flattening and angling down in a ridiculous mimicry of angry manga eyes, and Lavi wondered if that was any better than watching the Noah of Pleasure demonstrate what he did with Exorcist's hearts.

Kanda might like the idea that he could glare even after he was dead, after all.

The laugh bubbled out of him, still stifled and hardly more than any of his other protests, caught between his chest and his throat. No matter the range of emotions Tyki gave those eyes, they didn't disappear. The pink energy faded to a comforting yellow, surprisingly yellow to be bared Innocence, and Lavi refused to look away, refused to watch his own beloved Innocence crushed to dust.

He preferred to watch Kanda's eyes, now less slanted than they would have been in life, with smaller irises and droopier eyelids.

The Noah didn't punish him for it. He was still enveloped in warmth and numbness, and Tyki was silent.

The eyes blinked.

Lavi blinked back.

His Innocence was extremely bright, he could see the rest of the room in his peripheral vision. The ceiling wasn't stained anymore, his startled brain noted, and he wasn't in the same corner. He was still reclined but the air smelled different, more antiseptic. And there was a face, a lined and worn face, crouching around the blackness and the eyes.

"_What do you see?"_ Bookman's voice replaced the Noah's, and Lavi realized he was awake.

He closed his eye, feeling the grainy, dry quality of it, and opened it again, this time with a smile scrounged from bits and pieces of relief. Bookman was still there. An electric light burned on the table behind him, and he found he was completely cocooned in a warm, thick cotton blanket, tucked tightly around his neck. Even so, he wasn't hot, and he craned his neck, looking around.

At least, that was the idea. His body was a lump of useless flesh. He could barely twitch his head from side to side, and he had no strength to pick it up. Bookman still stood there, rigid at the side of his bed, and Lavi wondered if perhaps he was still dreaming after all.

Rhode . . . was it possible she could do that? Send him a dream even though she shouldn't know . . . where . . .

" _. . . an angry panda_?" he ventured, his voice a powerless croak, and he could actually see the old man's blood pressure rising.

"Idiot," he spat, in English, and Lavi was unable to flinch from the expected beating. But the iron-tipped fingers that touched him were gentle, so gentle he couldn't feel them at all. "You stupid, stupid child."

It had been a very long time since Bookman had called him a child, and Lavi just stared at him. Was this a memory? Was he still trapped? "Gigi . . ."

Abruptly the hooded eyes turned away, and the old man busied himself with some kind of pack, just outside of the range he could easily twist his head to see. The silence was still uneasy, not the same silence that had existed between them after the Ark, and Lavi hesitated. "I know . . . you're angry. That I contacted our Clan instead of you."

All movement beside him stilled, and when his master spoke again, it had a tinge of sorrowful amusement. _"And you do not trust that I am me."_

"_I really would be a fool,_" he responded as best he could. The slur was gone but his throat felt as if he hadn't used it in days. _"Tell me something."_

It took Bookman no time to think of something to say, something not from Lavi's memory, that would prove his identity. He'd probably thought it up waiting for him to wake, suspecting he would not be trusting. _"You outgrew storytime many years ago."_

Lavi closed his eye before it could give him away, and was glad he was unable to move. Gramps would see it anyway. "I didn't get a chance to tell them where I was."

Bookman was rifling through the bag again. "Kanda contacted the Order only after I received the message." He apparently found what he was looking for, and Lavi glanced at him when he heard what sounded like rain.

Bookman tucked the buckwheat-filled pillow beneath his neck, and Lavi found it was deliciously warm, smelling of lavender and sage. He knew he should have been hot, should have been sweating, and gave Bookman a questioning look when his head was released. The old man even went as far as to brush the hair from his eyes. "He said you had lost consciousness while passing on a message to our clan and could not be roused."

Heh. He was probably lucky Kanda hadn't left him for dead and gone on back to England. "I'm sorry."

"You did as you should have done," the older man murmured, passing a hand over his forehead again. "Tell me everything."

Lavi swallowed, surprised that he did not want water, that the panda wasn't offering him any. Why was he being so smothered in warmth? But he told him, about the innkeeper and her comments, their trip to the springhouse, their solution to the problem, and their attempt. He left nothing out, not even his own carelessness, and was not surprised that Bookman scoffed at him.

"Immature idiot."

"You said that the last time I fought with him."

"You Innocence should activate for me, so I can beat some strategy into that skull of yours!"

At the very mention of his Innocence he tried to pick up his head again, to search for it, and Gigi gave him a droll look. "Kanda would not relinquish it to the staff here. Allen Walker is carrying it for you."

_Good_, was his first thought, followed by that same niggling feeling about the formidable atmosphere, the out of place architecture. How could a hospital have so much money? "Gigi, this place-"

"Just thinking of that now? Moron."

"I was kind of preoccupied when we first arrived . . ." It wasn't much of an excuse, but hopefully the old man could translate that accurately without making him spell everything out. Like the fact he had barely been conscious, functioning only to get the message passed along. To share his recording.

And he had done so. Even if this hospital was funded with the Earl's money, nothing more than an Akuma factory, even if the dreams had been sent by Rhode and the Noah were about to descend on the place, he had passed along a vital piece of information.

Or, Tyki made it up as part of his little 'game.' Just because a Noah said something like that didn't make it true. Even though their track record for telling only truth was actually pretty good. He would leave that decision up to wiser heads.

"I have administered several treatments, and I have found nothing missing or added." The old man sighed deeply. "But much misaligned. Tell me how it happened."

Lavi had the urge to shrug, but he couldn't even if he wanted to. "Tyki is angry with me for my fight with Rhode on the Ark."

"The fight you would not tell me of."

He felt himself smile. "I did tell you of it."

"You left something out of the record."

"She dragged me into the dream world, I found her within it and I stabbed her. The only thing I left out was that she disguised herself as Allen, which is how I knew it was her. She fancies him a great deal, still, to hear Tyki tell it."

"You say his name so cavalierly."

The smile remained. "We're old friends now."

"Hmm."

Lavi gave him a reassuring grin. "I'm alive. He didn't take anything, just . . . rearranged some things." He tried and failed to twitch his arm. "This paralysis, will it wear off?" And was the numbness drugs or something else, something worse?

The old man gave him a very disapproving look, the kind he always gave him when he left something out of a record. "You were given a drug to prevent you from thrashing in your sleep. It's been a long time since something has disturbed your favorite pastime," he added quietly.

"It's been a long time since I've gotten my ass handed to me." He sobered a little. "How's Yuu?"

Bookman gave him a measuring look. "He'll recover as quickly as he always does. The staff are very taken with him."

Lavi blinked, digesting what he'd just heard. _"Gigi, I don't believe you're who you say you are anymore."_

_"Idiot. His concern for you prompted the comments. I'm surprised. I wouldn't be particularly fond of someone who left me at the bottom of a boiling spring."_

He simpered, wondering how his numb face pulled it off. "My Innocence slipped into it when Tyki broke my arm."

"What did you give him to gain the information?"

As much as he wanted to explain, he couldn't. Not to gramps. "It was incentive for me to remain conscious." And that was all Bookman really needed to know. If he'd already administered two treatments, he probably knew better than Lavi himself what Tyki had really done to him. "Why am I all bundled up?"

"You can't maintain a healthy core body temperature," was the clipped response, and suddenly the panda was pawing through the bag again. Hiding his eyes. "We'll leave this place after you're stable."

"Gigi . . . what _is_ this place?"

--

"Are you feeling up to telling me why you're both still alive?"

No. But a mission debriefing was not exactly something an Exorcist could or should refuse to perform, and Kanda dragged himself to a slightly more alert state of consciousness, allowing the lovely mental tatami mats and sliding walls to vanish, revealing stark white ceilings and cold iron holding useless medication feeding into his veins via a needle he could probably force Mugen's hilt through.

Upon seeing his open eyes, Komui seemed to relax a little bit, and Kanda gave him an icy glare. He meant to tell the man that he hated this place, hated their pain meds, felt like shit, and wanted to go home. But that was far too much effort for the equivalent of whining, so he communicated his displeasure with a look.

Komui's answering smile was tired. Tired and worried. "I spoke with Lavi a few minutes ago. He says he has no idea how you managed to get out of the spring, and to tell you he's grateful."

In Lavi-speak, he'd probably said something horrible and retarded. It was nice of Komui to translate, even if he was far too observant for his own good.

They'd survived by sheer luck. There was no other detail necessary.

"He said he dropped his Innocence when Tyki broke his arm, and tried to activate it despite the distance. Were you aware of his difficulties?"

Was he aware that he had been left at the bottom of an extremely hot spring with no means of quickly escaping? The fact that he looked like a mummy out of some comic book would indicate that yes, he had in fact noticed that particular 'difficulty' and the difficulty he had now was that the useless medication going into his system through a garden hose was only succeeding in knocking him out long enough for the damn nurses to rebandage the hands he so painstaking uncovered every chance he got.

There was no way he could wield Mugen effectively with bandages on his hand. Kanda flexed them unconsciously, still able to feel the imprint of Mugen's hilt on his right palm. A brand, showing him just how hard he'd been gripping the sword, and how hot it had been. The imprint would be completely gone in a day at most, but until then it was a reminder that his technique had been so bad in part because he hadn't been holding Mugen properly.

Hadn't been able to.

"He dropped it practically on top of me, but it did extend about thirty feet before it stopped." Speaking was quite easy for him, he hadn't been stupid enough to swallow any of the water, and that also seemed to relax Komui. Kanda was getting rather fed up with the whole thing. Why, if Allen Walker could gate them anywhere he had been, were they still here? He could be moved, such a short distance to travel he could probably walk himself, but it was the second day he had woken to find himself here.

"So it took you away from the worst of the heat."

Wasn't that what he'd just said? "It shrank to a carryable size so I took it with me." And used the other Innocence, the blasted foot long hairpin, like an icepick to help accelerate his climb to the surface. Kanda let his eyes slide closed again. "Once I was out, it took me a moment to get my bearings. I knew Lavi was gone but not where until - I heard him."

It was only a little catch. Something someone like Lavi or Bookman or Komui would notice. It would tell them that hearing those sounds, especially the first one, had been something that had concerned him. Had been his business.

He was going to run Lavi through when next he saw the red-headed idiot. From the sounds he'd been making Kanda had been certain Lavi was already dead, yet when Allen and Lenalee had visited they said it appeared he would make a full recovery.

And now his only difficulty was reconciling that with the twitching body that had been vomiting blood into the water, that sat astride his Innocence pale and lifeless, that was as cold as a corpse and never warmed, with blood matting the back of his head and eyes that drifted closed even as his nonsense words trailed into silence.

No. He'd seen Lavi handle pain before. He might physically make a full recovery, but he was not all right.

Komui played off his concern, idly toying with his hat. "You must have been terribly scalded."

His eyes flew open at that to give the man a full, head-on glare. "It doesn't matter. Recovering the Innocence is a higher priority than killing Noah." Or saving humans.

Kanda knew damn well what Komui was hinting at. And injuries like he'd sustained were no excuse. He and Lavi should have done better. But Lavi was taken off guard and so was he. It never should have happened. They should have been able to destroy that cloud of Tease long before it consumed a single soul.

"Why didn't you wait for the science team to find a way to get to it?"

He huffed in irritation. "Blocking the spring could have washed away the Innocence."

Komui sighed, letting his hat fall into his lap and giving Kanda his full attention. He looked terrible, and his Walker-like smile rubbed Yuu all kinds of the wrong way. "Toma called us about two hours before you did. He said a plague of butterflies descended on the town, then retreated as swiftly as they'd come. When he got to the spring house, he found two discarded Exorcist coats, blood, what he described as the hind end of a twelve foot long black rat snake, and deep slashes in one wall. I assume you used Nigentou?"

So now he was going to get a lecture on activating his Innocence when he was already healing. Kanda closed his eyes again, though his eyebrows probably still gave away his displeasure. "I did." Poorly. His eight petal technique had been slow and sloppy, cutting the tentacle pinning Lavi to the wall and inflicting several slashes to Tyki's side before the rest were quite successfully blocked. His only saving grace was that he had deeply surprised Tyki, and when he followed up the attack with a backhand using Mugen's hilt rather than a slash he'd landed a lucky hit.

And that was all it was. "It wasn't enough to seriously injure the Noah, so I took Lavi from him and we used the bathhouse drainage system to move into an open field. Lavi was still able to activate, and we retreated with the recovered Innocence." And found themselves in this hospital from every horrible science mystery Lenalee had ever read.

In fact, if he hadn't used his golem to call the Order that night, he might have ended up slicing one of the staff, just to make sure they really weren't Akuma.

"Did you hear any of Tyki's conversation with Lavi?"

It was an odd question, but Kanda refused to react. "I heard him say he was going to take Lavi's heart." Everything else the Noah had been saying as he'd crept as quietly as possible into the first bathhouse had been softer, too soft to hear over the pouring water from the springhouse, too inconsequential to the sound of his own blood moving through his seared body. His pain had deafened him.

Not enough to miss whatever it was Tyki had done to Lavi prior to that point, though. Pinned with his broken arm behind him, and the Noah crushing him against it, that alone would not have been enough to make Lavi scream like he had. Tyki had done far worse to him, as evidenced by the blood he vomited up. If he hadn't taken something, he must have at least damaged it pretty badly.

Or he'd put a Tease inside Lavi . . .? No, Bookman would have found it by now. He would have been treating Lavi with his own Innocence, Heavenly Compass, and that would surely damage any golems Tyki might have left inside Lavi. He'd stopped throwing up blood by the time they'd arrived in this cursed city anyway.

"Did you overhear whatever it was that Lavi reported to the Bookman Clan?"

Yes. But not in any language that he knew, and he had been too injured himself to properly memorize it. It wasn't his concern. "He spoke in a foreign language I did not recognize." But whatever it had been, Lavi had been willing to die to ensure his Clan received the message. And that was reason enough for him to allow them to enter a place that was obviously not a normal hospital, enough to keep him functioning and aware even as he let them start working on the red-head, an effort to discover what Tyki took and how to extend what time Lavi had left-

Only to find out Lavi still had all his major organs, and only then had he thought to call the Order. As soon as that nurse - Resplendid or Guinevere or whatever her name was - had seen his golem, she'd started calling him Exorcist, but more importantly, she'd stopped trying to get Mugen and Ozuchi Kozuchi away from him.

Then Allen had gated reinforcements into the actual city, wonder of wonders, and Komui had assured him that the place was everything he thought it was, but run by a patron of the Order, Lord Crestat. That the staff were well aware of Akuma and Exorcists, and were working on an antidote for the poison gas a destroyed Akuma released. Which was why he felt ill at ease even looking at the place. There really _were_ Akuma in the building, held in talisman fields and periodically destroyed by Exorcists in training.

Cross had brought Allen Walker to this very city once for that purpose. He was rather surprised Tiedoll had not, but then again, by the time they managed to make their way out of Japan both he and Marie had gotten enough experience fighting for their lives that destroying captive Akuma would have been pointless.

Either way, it didn't matter. Lenalee and Walker were present to counter any Noah threat, but he still felt better with Mugen leaning against the mattress on his right, and he would feel better still if he were back at the Order, if only because he'd be allowed to recover in his own damn room.

Komui was still chewing on his answer to the last question. "Kanda-kun . . ."

"Che. What else do you need to know?" He opened his eyes again, this time not glaring. "We found Innocence, we recovered it, we were intercepted by a Noah, and everyone survived the encounter." But then it did occur to him there was something he was leaving out. "Tyki Mikk is more powerful than when I last faced him."

Whatever it was Walker did to him, it had not weakened him in the least. Even those slashes, delivered with his own Mugen, had been rather shallow and hadn't appeared to have slowed Tyki down at all. The loss of a tentacle had hurt him, but not nearly enough.

If Lavi hadn't activated, they would be dead.

Komui's gaze sharpened a little. "How much more?"

"A general could defeat him." He could probably still kill him if he were absolutely on his game, but not nearly as easily as he could have in Edo. "He is by far the most dangerous Noah I have encountered."

Between the ability to reach through anything and all those additional appendages, he was singularly suited for killing. Far better than Lulubell, Rhode, even Skinn had been.

"There's no evidence that he pursued you. He was gone from the scene by the time Toma investigated."

Lavi's constant repositioning of Ozuchi Kozuchi had probably slowed him, but if Tyki were half as competent as he seemed, he would have found the evidence of those sloppy stops and starts. If he had wanted to, he could have followed them at least to this town, or the others nearby. It was foolish to think he would not, not with both of them so injured, and three pieces of Innocence ripe for the taking.

He reached out, touching Mugen's hilt lightly, and Komui gently patted his knee through the blanket covering his bandages. "Lenalee and Walker are here, keeping an eye on things. We'll withdraw to headquarters as soon as we can move Lavi."


	3. Chapter 3

Well, maybe it's not so bad after all! Thanks for the detailed reviews, they help. Non-explicit smut warning for this chapter. (Well, no more explicit than previous smut, I guess I should say.)

**Azab** - Yep, the beginning of the last chapter was indeed a dream. Possibly sent by Rhode Camelot, possibly not.

**Shadow of Arashi** - Glad you like it.

**Yumise-lunar** - What was confusing for you? As for Luu/Liedoll/Tuu, it will become apparent as I update.

- Luu : Lavi and Yuu, but only if it's in a bathroom. (Loo? Get it?)

- Liedoll - Lavi and Tiedoll, as the name would imply. (well, I suppose it could be Lenalee/Tiedoll…)

- Tuu - Tiedoll and Yuu, but only if previous smut occurred and Kanda is feeling left out. (as in too…)

--

"I see you've collected another signature."

Lavi glanced down at his arm, letting his lips quirk in the direction of the speaker. "Yep. Kuro-chan just got back from Rome."

There was a laugh, and the sound of metal tapping against ceramics. Lavi very carefully kept watching the mirror, ignoring the steam, and kept his left hand perfectly steady as he balanced the razor against his throat.

"I'm surprised his penmanship is so nice on plaster."

A long stroke, ending at his chin. Not a drop of blood. "I guess having to write those letters all the time really gave him a good hand. It's almost bigger than Lenalee's contribution."

A scrape, to his right, that Lavi completely ignored, running the razor beneath the running water to clear it of scruff and soap. Behind him he caught a glimpse of the slim body of one Kanda Yuu passing by, towel around his waist and small basket of bizarre Japanese bathing utensils in hand. Of course not greeting either of them.

"You gonna keep it?"

"Eh?" It was rather cute that Lenalee had determined she was going to draw a chibi of every Exorcist who wouldn't be around to sign it before it came off, but the end result was a cast on his forearm that looked as if it had been attacked by marker-wielding eight year olds. "I don't think I can. Don't they cut these things off?"

"Dunno. Never broke my arm." Splashing at his right, a few droplets striking his bared arm above the cast. "When does it come off, anyway?" Sounds of a face being toweled off.

It really was a wonder how quickly Allen Walker could shave, Lavi noted, completing his next stroke. "Dunno. Couple weeks?"

In the mirror he could see Allen through a steam-caused fog, rubbing his wet hands through his hair in an effort to make it stop sticking up. A lost cause. Allen made a face at the mirror, though his eyes weren't quite in the right place to have noticed Lavi's glance, and the redhead averted his eye, finishing up with his throat and moving on to his left cheek.

"But it doesn't hurt anymore, right?"

"Long as I don't bang it into things." It was an odd thing to contemplate, that the Fourteenth and Allen could be getting along so well now that they were giving each other crap in reflective surfaces. He made a mental note to share the observation with the panda, continuing to keep his hand absolutely steady as the other exorcist accidentally brushed his right shoulder with the towel he slung carelessly over his own.

"And the other stuff, it's all good now?"

Lavi was careful not to move his jaw too much when he spoke. "Yeah. Still get cold pretty easy, but the tremors and stuff, all that's pretty much gone." Most of the pain was a memory, his nerves and insides suitably recovered after several weeks and a lot of work on the part of gramps and Matron.

"Wasn't fair that you were ambidextrous, though." Allen wet his toothbrush, shaking salt and baking soda onto the bristles. "Bookman didn't even give you a break."

Lavi half-shrugged, pulling the tip of his nose up ridiculously to get to the hair on his upper lip, and Allen snorted at him. "Yeah, well, that's gramps for yah. If I hadn't actually caught him sleeping once I'd swear he never did."

" . . . womph?"

"In all the years I've been his apprentice. Sad, huh." Lavi switched to the other cheek, rinsing his razor as necessary. "He's real sneaky about it. I think if that's a hidden requirement of Bookmen I'm totally gonna fail that exam."

Allen laughed and spat, and Lavi hooked a finger through the bottom cord of his eyepatch, sweeping it over his ear temporarily to get the one part along his jaw he'd missed. "Catch you in the cafeteria, then?"

More face-wiping. "I can wait-"

A loud growl interrupted him, and Lavi grinned at the mirror. "Yeah, I can tell. Go. I'll catch up."

"You sure-"

_Hell yes I am._ "Be there in a minute. Or ten. It'll give Jerry enough time to start taking orders again after you clear out his kitchen."

Allen made a noise of protest but he didn't really mean it, and soon his faucet turned off with a squeak and the presence on Lavi's right side was dressed and gone. He finished shaving, setting the straight-edge down on the side of the sink and quickly rinsing his hands. There was still soap on his face but he'd get it in the shower, and folding the razor, he placed it on the mirror shelf next to his daytime eyepatch.

He was late this morning, which meant he was going to have to deal with things in front of other people.

And he would. Allen had practically been rubbing elbows with him and not noticed anything at all.

Lavi wondered if that was actually true as he lapped the sinks, heading from the toilet section of the generous bathroom to the showers. Allen was a master at hiding how he was feeling, which meant he was likely to see the cracks in other people's shells. Perhaps he was too tied up with the Fourteenth to really pay attention.

Lavi used the thoughts as a distractionary technique, bare feet slapping across tile floors slick with condensation. There would be plenty of hot water, there always was, and he passed Kanda with a wave and a smile and chose a shower head reasonably close to the other, who was seated on the tile bench getting clean _before_ he took his shower. It was a Japanese thing, but considering he refused to use the European-style bath, his bathing ritual seemed a little on the excessively, stubbornly, _Kanda_ side to most of them.

And Lavi usually teased him about it. Which meant he had no choice but to choose a shower head within talking proximity. Close enough to throw off suspicion, since he always had before. Far enough away that his annoying banter irritated the other into ignoring him.

Unfortunately, due to Kanda's choice of bathing locations, the only available showerheads put the dark-haired samurai on his right.

"Oi, Yuu-chan, you trust this stuff that Kuro-chan brings in?" Lavi made his usual show of evaluating the various supplied bottles of shampoo for a moment, then slapped his forehead. "Oh, that's right. You use _bar soap_ on your hair."

This particularly morning Kanda didn't even bother to give him an irritated snort, and Lavi glanced over at the other Exorcist to see he was actually mostly finished with his hair, dragging a greenish, semi-translucent bar through the very ends. It obviously didn't overly dry his hair, and as far as he knew was also a very normal Japanese custom, but Lavi still found it fascinating and thus of course mentioned it every time it was feasible.

Which was every morning he and Yuu ended up in the showers together. It didn't happen often, much to Kanda's probable relief.

Having settled on a bottle of shampoo, he crossed back over to his chosen showerhead, turning on the water. Into the small shelf went the bottle, even as hot water started to lap at his bare feet, and Lavi glanced overhead, trying to find a dry place on the hot water pipe to hang his towel.

Distantly he heard the door open, and a deep and deafening yawn identified the incoming person as Chaoji. The steam in the shower room was sucked briefly towards the sinks, the quick intake of a dragon's breath, and it occurred to Lavi that he also needed to scrounge up a bar of soap, now that he was done making fun of Kanda's.

"You're awfully quiet this morning," he continued in Kanda's direction, locating a thick yellow cake in the same general vicinity as the community shampoo. It was placed next to the bottle, and Lavi moved to pull off his towel, glancing inquiring at the other Exorcist when he continued not to respond. "Get a mission or someth-"

Kanda wasn't there.

He had no time to contemplate what that meant before a powerful strike to the side of his head had him briefly seeing stars. Lavi lashed out blindly with his right arm, with the cast, and it was effortlessly caught. At the same time another limb snaked behind him, grabbing his shoulder and hurling him in a short spin that slammed him against the tile, the plaster cast trapped behind him and cutting hard enough into his back to make it bleed.

His gasp brought with it the taste of steam, and then an arm was against his throat, and a knee was sliding between his.

No. No no no no no. He was safe here, Rhode couldn't get to him here-

But beyond the growing white spots on his eyes, he could a thin face, with dark hair swept back and the glint of white teeth.

Lavi jerked backwards, driving his back harder into the sharp edges of his cast, and both his arm and shoulder twinged in a way that made his stomach clench. Lavi brought up his left hand, he could touch the limb pinning him this time, but as before, yanking on it did him no good. That same powerful body crushed him to the wall, uncomfortably warm against his skin, and he squeezed his eye shut, refusing to look.

Not real not real not real not real. None of this was real, he was going to open his eyes and - the tile was hard against the back of his head - Kanda was going to be giving him that look like he was stupid and - his next frantic inhalation brought with it that odd combination of steam and fresh air.

He turned his head away from the hot breath against his ear, swallowing back bile and refusing to listen. Not happening. It was not happening. He was not trapped, Tyki was not there.

Tyki Mikk was not really there.

He stood there and shook for at least a minute, denying and expecting sharper pain, but as before, nothing changed. Nothing would, not until he looked. Until he knew. Lavi forced his eye open again, his brain dutifully collecting the information he was doing his best to ignore. A voice in his ear, tile wall and hot water.

But there was light, not darkness, and when his sight cleared further, the thin face wasn't Tyki's.

It was Kanda's.

Lavi just stared at him. His eyes were dark, dark and angry like Tyki had made them. But there was still white visible, they weren't empty holes in his skull. It was his body, wet and slick, that was leaning against him, pinning him exactly the same way Tyki had. It was his voice in his ear.

And worse, some of the angry was settling out into something else entirely.

"-down, Lavi-"

He couldn't relax in the slightest, not easing so much as a pound off the plaster, trying his damndest to ignore the ache in the arm, the ache in his shoulder. It wasn't the same. It was Kanda. It was Kanda pinning him, he was in the Order's headquarters, it was just because he'd angered the other Exorcist.

This was nothing. Nothing to worry about.

Even though he'd panicked, it wasn't like Kanda was going to tell anyone.

Lavi found he was gulping air, so hard and fast he could barely swallow the saliva collecting as his body fought to expel his fear. Kanda didn't let him up for a single second, didn't say anything else. Didn't move at all. Just held him there, pinned to the wall, while he struggled to catch his breath.

Motion at the doorway caught his eye, and Chaoji Han stopped dead with one foot over the raised tile lip of the entrance.

His unsettled stomach clenched further, and Lavi opened his mouth, struggling to find his voice. Something, anything to shrug this off. "O-oi, Chaoji-"

Kanda's head barely moved, his eyes never leaving Lavi's. "Leave."

Their newest Exorcist hesitated, visibly debating his options, and then he dropped his own basket of typical Chinese showering utensils, involving wooden spikes on a roller that looked a little like a torture device. He also visibly screwed up his courage. He wasn't on the Ark anymore, this wasn't a life or death situation, and Yuu was certainly no Allen Walker. "Kanda-"

"I said leave."

Chaoji stepped fully into the shower room. "Let him go-"

"Chaoji-dono." Lavi licked his lips and swallowed hard to stop the first flutterings of a heave. "You know how Yuu-chan gets in the mornings." The thigh between his pressed in further, clearly in warning, and Lavi was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how his towel had bunched. "We just need to talk for a second."

The older-but-younger Exorcist hesitated again, then suddenly blushed, and Kanda turned his head fully, pinning the apprentice with a deadly glare.

The sailor took another step despite it, eyes now more on Lavi than the samurai. "Lavi-san-"

"We do this all the time. Right, Yuu-chan?" He gave Kanda his best cheeky grin, though of course the swordsman was not looking at him, and Chaoji glanced between the two of them a moment more. The white spots returned, on the edges of his vision, and Lavi wondered how long he was going to have to stifle his panting.

"You're sure-"

"Tch. Leave or I'll slice your throat."

Lavi continued to give the other Exorcist an encouraging smile, still unable to completely hide his tremors, and Chaoji shot him a look that plainly said _are you sure? You sure don't look sure._ But he couldn't trust his voice not to give away the fact he was all but holding his breath to hide his panic, and the chinaman gradually bent to collect his things, backing out of the doorframe. It wasn't very long before they heard the main door open and then shut, and Kanda kept his head cocked, as if debating whether the shy Exorcist was really gone.

Lavi couldn't hear anything over the pounding blood in his ears.

Apparently Chaoji really did leave; abruptly Kanda was facing him again, still not letting up the iron arm he had settled across his throat. He still looked angry, but there was something more there. Something calculating. Something that belonged in a sparring ring, not a shower.

Heat pressed into his left thigh, and Lavi flinched before he realized it was just hot water, finally soaking into his towel from Kanda's body. The struggle and subsequent toss into the wall had seriously loosened the towel from his own waist; if Kanda let up, it would fall to the tile floor and get soaked in a second. It was already collecting splatter from the shower head beside him, not quite as hot as the spring had been, but close.

Too close.

"S-so, whacha doing," he managed, with only a little tremor. The samurai gave him a dark look.

As if it wasn't readily obvious. "I was," he growled.

Lavi gave him a blank look, and the eyes narrowed further.

"You asked if I was assigned a mission. I was."

Lavi licked his lips again, willing his stomach to behave. Breathing was a little easier, now, though he still felt light-headed, and had to suppress a twitch as water - or blood - tickled the small of his back. "Ah, that's good?"

Kanda shoved him back a little, using the arm that was pining him, and Lavi realized that Kanda was able to hold him there one-handed. One-handed and one-legged.

"You've got the same assignment." Kanda leaned in closer, and again, the terrycloth bunched between their bodies came uncomfortably close to pinching him. Lavi squirmed and Yuu continued to glare at him, not letting up for a second.

" . . . so you're saying you don't trust me in a fight anymore?"

Maybe surprise, maybe just surprise that he'd say it so openly, with so little dancing around the topic. "I was," the samurai admitted, almost grumbling. His free right hand ghosted across the skin of Lavi's side and he jerked despite himself.

"W-was what?" His fragile breath control was gone again, that was all it took, and Kanda Yuu stared at him for a long moment, the anger almost completely gone.

"You're terrified," he said slowly, as if the words were nonsensical to him.

Lavi tried for a smirk and failed. ". . . that what this is?"

He received another touch for his efforts, and that one made him flinch as well. Kanda didn't say anything else, he just watched him. As soon as Lavi started to get a grasp on his breathing, let alone his shaking, Kanda touched him again. Sometimes his side, sometimes his chest. Each brush was light and gentle, and if his skin hadn't crawled from each one, it probably would have tickled.

It took him a truly ridiculous amount of time to adjust, to suppress. To get control again. Thin, thin control. He took a deep breath, then another, finally able to ignore the sweep of Kanda's fingers against his bare stomach, and gave the other Exorcist the first reasonably confident look he'd managed since Kanda attacked him.

"So is the lesson over for today?"

Yuu gave him an irritated eyeflick, splaying his hand across his chest, just over his heart. This time Lavi expected it. This time he kept his breathing even, kept a steady eye.

He could do it with Tyki, he'd do it with Kanda.

And then Kanda adjusted his thigh, just a little higher, a little harder, and Lavi heard himself whine under his breath when the towel exerted just a little too much pressure.

"Lesson?" Yuu's voice was oddly emotionless, and the hand over his heart disappeared, shortly before the towel was yanked unceremoniously away. Lavi hissed in surprise and pain, and then Kanda replaced his leg.

"You haven't even started the lesson."

Lavi digested that, the tone of voice, the look on his face. Disappointed, more than anything. As if he was doing something expected. Something wrong. "Yuu-"

"Che. You just don't get it, do you." The Japanese teen moved his face closer; Lavi remained still.

"If hiding it worked so well, what are you doing pinned to the wall?"

The first stirrings of anger bled through the icy cold keeping Lavi's stomach in line. "Because you pinned me-"

"You're letting me, baka usagi."

Lavi gaped at him.

Kanda was right. He was not Tyki Mikk. Lavi actually _could_ pry Kanda's arm off him, or shove him away, punch him in the face, knee him in the groin. Outside of pulling ineffectually at his arm, he hadn't done anything.

It hadn't even occurred to him that he could.

Lavi gave him a rakish grin, this time reasonably sure it even looked sincere. "Are you asking me to put you on the floor, Yuu-chan?"

In answer, the samurai's free hand came up and touched his chin, _exactly_ the way Tyki had done, and any sense of confidence fell away with his stomach.

"You can pretend or you can accept. You can't do both."

It took everything in him not to shake that hand away. And he wasn't even sure why he wasn't. What did tolerating this prove to Yuu? To anyone but him? "Yes, you can," he replied, forcing his voice not to tremble. Pretending something wasn't while accepting that it was was a way of life for Bookmen. He could deny his own head coming off if it meant that he would live to record the event. He could deny his own heart if it meant walking beside the panda.

Kanda's eyes became colder. Almost as if his flippancy was rejection. "He touched you like this. Did you like it?"

Lavi blinked at him several times, even when his fingers became harder. Reminding him how it felt to have his jaw entirely in the Noah's grasp. He did jerk his head back, even hitting the tile, but Kanda didn't let him go. "What the hell kind of question is that."

"If you didn't, then why are you letting me?"

Again, Lavi had no answer. He was concentrating so hard on hiding any response that he was only feeling what Kanda was doing peripherally. His mind was more caught up with breathing steadily, which his body didn't want, and slowing his heartbeat, which was pounding harder and harder. More caught up with fighting these physical signs of reaction to a touch that-

That he really didn't feel.

Which begged the question, if he really wasn't paying attention to what Kanda was doing, why the hell was he reacting to it.

And that answer was as obvious and as frustrating as the last. It just wasn't that simple.

Lavi jerked his chin out of Kanda's grasp, snapping his teeth together as he nearly caught one of Kanda's fingers. The other Exorcist didn't flinch in the slightest.

"Because the only ways to throw you off involve hurting you, idiot." He moved his own thigh for emphasis, and was confronted with the unmistakable weight of foreign flesh against him. Briefly the dark eyes boring into his seemed to glaze, just a little, and Lavi froze.

This did not have the intended effect. Kanda refocused, a bit angrier than before. "Don't look surprised. Why do you think Tyki pinned you like this?"

"Honestly? He found it comfortable." The second toss against the wall had been to facilitate it, and Lavi's record showed plainly that Tyki had spent more time using that leg to hold up his own weight and that of his victim than getting off on the friction. "He wanted me, don't get me wrong. He just didn't want that part."

He wasn't sure how the other teen would interpret that, any more than he was sure why Kanda was getting enjoyment out of the whole thing. He was naked, of course; they both were now, and skin on skin was in general nice when it wasn't reminding you of silk heavy with humidity, between you and the grey-tinged body of something that used to be human but really wasn't anymore.

Then skin on skin became not such a turn-on.

But somehow, it wasn't the idea of a Noah pinning him that bothered him. It was the memory.

How could something bother him in practice but not in concept? Was it no different than caring about the person in front of him, that Deak would have already pummeled?

"What do you mean?"

Now it was Lavi's turn to refocus. This would not be pleasant news for Kanda, not with Daisya Barry being who and what he was. "He wanted my heart. What you saw was a warm-up for what he intended to do once he took it."

The dark eyes widened a little, shock prominent, and then the expected narrowing. It was as if Lavi could see through that burnished onyx to the tiny Kanda that lived inside the Exorcist's skull, sitting at a desk in his brain and solidifying his dislike of Tyki with another check box, another reason. No more or less significant than the one above it, where the Noah of Pleasure had killed Barry, but just another tickmark to remind that the next time they met, he needed to exterminate the Noah from the face of the planet.

"I didn't see," the Japanese teen muttered. "I heard."

Lavi dropped his eye without thinking. So Kanda hadn't really gotten there until the very end. In time to see how quickly he'd broken.

Tyki had been right. Bookman wouldn't have shown a damn thing, not for hours and hours. It took him dying on the Ark to get the old man to shed a tear. That pain, as unbearable as it was, wouldn't have been enough. Not in ten minutes.

"Is that what it was?" Kanda's hips shifted, dragging the still-hardening flesh across the top of his thigh, and Lavi pressed himself hard against the wall - and his arm - before he could stop. The blood was starting to roar in his ears again, and when Yuu repeated the motion, he pulled at his right arm unconsciously, trying to jar the still-healing bones.

"I'm not going to hurt you." It was the first halfway reassuring thing the other teen had said, and Lavi's eye flicked back up to Kanda's face in surprise. He knew that, within reason. Why-

Because he was suddenly shaking like a leaf. If not for that leg and that arm, he might have slid down the tile wall. He meant to say 'I know,' but it somehow came out sounding like 'stop,' and either way Kanda didn't act like he'd heard anything. His eyes seemed to grow darker, and there was no doubt he was harder than before, starting to stand on his own and drawing an oblong circle at the junction of Lavi's leg and torso.

The other touches might have tickled. This might have burned. The feeling of the other teen's coarser hair grinding into his skin was ignorable, it was, he was ignoring it and speaking.

"Not helping-"

Kanda's lips drew back into something like a mild snarl. "You're still not getting it."

"I'm getting that you're having a g-good time-" He hated the stutter, even when Kanda kept looking at him so steadily, his breathing unchanged, while his body continued easing against his, their damp skin catching together.

"You think so?" He punctuated it by dropping his free right hand to Lavi's hip, ghosting over the angry, sunken remains of a burn. "You think I like watching you flinch every time someone comes up on your right? You think I enjoy watching you smile like moyashi does, like it doesn't bother you?"

The easing was gradually increasing in frequency and pressure, and Lavi found that he was getting all the same benefits Kanda was. There wasn't enough pain in his arm to distract him anymore. "Kanda, stop-"

"Then figure it out already."

There was ice in his gut instead of pain this time, and it wasn't enough. "Kanda, stop."

The swordsman didn't even hesitate. Never stopped looking at him. In total control of himself, of his movements. It was supposed to be reassuring, Lavi knew, that Kanda would keep his promise of not hurting him even accidentally, but in the end it reminded him of Tyki, who hadn't had any emotion vested in it to begin with. Who was also completely in control.

Or maybe Kanda knew that too, and he wasn't going to let up until he got whatever it was he wanted. That thought only increased the cold, successfully warring with the heat pooling in his groin.

"That's enough, Kanda-kun."

It was far, far too deep to be his own voice, but more shockingly, Kanda actually stopped moving. The arm pinning his throat didn't let up even slightly, but Kanda's eyes did flick to the shower room entrance, his head turning slightly in the direction of his general.

It was Froi Tiedoll standing there now, and Lavi hadn't even heard the bathroom door open.


	4. Chapter 4

Aww. Now I feel loved! Thanks for the detailed reviews. Explicit smut warning - previous stuff has been fairly tame compared to this.

I guess now is about the time I say this was inspired by a request on the D.Gray Man Kink Meme (google if you don't know - first result's the place). Unfortunately, it took me this long to get around to the requested kink - the Liedoll - so I dunno if it fits what the requestor wanted. But that's okay, I've had a blast writing it. Barring massive demand for more chapters, this is the last one.

**Mirokus wife** - Thanks! Lavi's such a nifty character, seems a waste to have him not think things through.

**Shadow of Arashi** - You don't happen to be the original Tiedoll/Lavi requestor, do you? And I dunno if Tyki's going to make a return, at least not in this fic. But I'll keep it in mind if you really, really wanna read it.

**Azab** - Thanks for sticking with me all the way through. Wouldn't have posted the rest if not for your comments, so, thanks! Not sure how to throw a Yullen in, I suppose that could always go with Tyki coming back for Lavi and Allen feeling responsible. We'll see!

--

"Chaoji-kun was quite worried about you," the general said slowly, stepping over the tile lip and into the room. He was dressed quite casually, with his cream-colored sleeves rolled up and grey slacks bearing evidence of paint.

Which meant he hadn't been pulled away from anything important. It was possible no one even knew where he was but Chaoji.

"He seemed to think Kanda-kun was actually trying to kill you."

"Che." Derision seeped off the sound, and Lavi's wide eye flicked back to Kanda briefly. "I wouldn't use my hands."

"He does not yet know you well, Yuu-kun. Give him time."

There was no tension. There was no unnatural strain. Master and pupil spoke as if standing before Jerry's window waiting for their breakfasts.

Lavi had barely tucked that fact away before the general leaned comfortably against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, and refocused his attention on him. "Lavi-san, may I ask you a rather personal question?"

He blinked. When he opened his eye, everything was still the same. The general was still watching him with a friendly expression, a bit of sadness beneath his mustache and tousled mouse-grey curls, and the weight of Kanda's glare was physical. There was still a low roar in his ears, his blood pressure and pulse were still elevated, he was still having trouble suppressing his breathing.

So he gave Tiedoll a bright smile. "Of course, general."

The older man, one of only five living Exorcists that had achieved a higher than one hundred percent synch rate with their Innocence, grimaced lightly. "You'll pardon me for saying so, but that expression looks quite painful on you." Lavi let it crumble, which didn't seem to put the general any more at ease. "Why are you permitting my pupil to handle you in this manner?"

Lavi immediately disliked the word 'handle' in that statement, as much as he disliked the way Tiedoll said it. He knew his eye cooled when the general's expression shifted yet again, very openly. "As I was just explaining to him, there's no way to-"

"He hasn't figured it out yet," Kanda interrupted impatiently.

"Ne, ne, Yuu-kun, be patient." A bit of disapproval, but nothing stinging. "Not every problem can be solved in the method most efficient for you." For some reason, this seemed to incense Kanda, but he only gave it away with his eyes and a tensing of the already iron arm still braced across his throat. Tiedoll, for his part, paid no mind to the fact that he had just angered the individual currently holding Lavi's life against his forearm, and refocused.

"Kloud was your general, was she not? It was she who visited the Bookman Clan last to find conformers suitable for Innocence she carried?"

It indeed had been the scarred, burned, beautiful woman that had visited their Clan, beckoning to the raw Innocence that had buzzed so curiously by his eye. Deak had been recording but detached, aware only that it was indeed a rare occasion that Innocence would choose the same master and apprentice, or even anyone at all from such a small conclave of active Bookman that had been in the European sanctuary at the time. Like obedient fireflies they had returned to her hand and disappeared, and as if both closing an intense bargaining session at market and teasing a suitor, she had made the Order's offer and disappeared, with Lau Jimin staring over her shoulder as disapprovingly as a simian possibly could.

A simian he later learned was either the host to a parasitic Innocence or the manifestation of an Innocence itself.

'Lavi' had handled her with far less distance. He had instantly grown googly-eyes and gaped at the sight of her, nearly losing his tongue when she had closed his jaw for him. Once his and Bookman's training was done, she left them to their duties not as Exorcists but as Bookmen, the reason they could travel with whichever general's team they chose. In hindsight, they made for poor apprentices.

Though Bookman had succeeded several times in making her laugh.

Kanda gave him a nudge, breaking his train of thought, and Lavi gave a short nod, as much as he was able to. "She was."

A gusty sigh. "This is truly her lesson to teach you, perhaps more so than Bookman's. Unfortunately, she will be away for many weeks, and while I do not necessarily agree with Kanda-kun's methods, I agree with his sense of urgency."

At the mention of Bookman he tensed, enough that Kanda gave him a quick once-over, and he felt his heart start to pound once more. "Bookman can't know about this." It was the only thing worth demanding of a general. Kanda could do this every day for as long as he felt he needed to, so long as Bookman never saw how badly he handled it.

The look Tiedoll gave him was almost pitying. "I'm afraid it's too late for that, Lavi-san." When Lavi just stared at him, wondering exactly what that meant, the general sighed. "Even after Edo, you would believe that your pain does not hurt him? That he felt nothing upon hearing what had become of you at the hands of a Noah?"

Lavi let his gaze fall, relief warring with guilt. It was true, that Bookman had stunned him after the Ark with that display of forbidden emotion, but Tiedoll really had no concept of what would happen to him if Bookman knew how poorly he was physically reacting to this. It would be the end of 'Lavi,' certainly. A Bookman who recorded something from the perspective of a victim, a Bookman that had a negative physical response to a record . . .

A reaction this bad, this long after the fact would have him reset to his default personality, assignment or not. He was worthless as a Bookman if he couldn't put the memory behind him. And as much time as he'd spent analyzing the problem, suppressing it, he was no closer to understanding _why_. He'd fought for his life before. He'd been without Innocence and had his skull nearly crushed by Skinn Boric. If not for Noise Marie, he would have died then. He'd been nearly killed by the level three on Anita's boat, yet handled the next set of level threes without the slightest hesitance.

It wasn't a fear of the pain. He'd been hurt before, pretty badly, both in the fights preceding and continuing through Edo. He'd taken a massive hit from that level four in headquarters, as well, but he still went into a fight with the same confidence. And despite his current situation, he was pretty sure rape was not the problem. Under Tiedoll's eye he could care less that he was unclothed, though he wasn't particularly happy about his own visible (though half-hearted) interest in the body pinning him.

And even that unease had more to do with the idea that Tiedoll, having lived the cloistered life for a very long time, would not be pleased with a scene that looked destined to end with sodomy. Then again it wasn't as if Tiedoll was Cross Marian, he wasn't likely to go around killing anyone who had less than honorable intentions for one of his pupils.

At least if he did, he certainly hid it well. Glancing back at him, Lavi had the distinct impression his show of embarrassment at the concept of Bookman caring for him was as transparent as his earlier smile had been.

Lavi was willing to let that knowing look go, but the general's apprentice was not. Kanda leaned in a bit closer, stealing his control as easily as he had before, and despite his distraction, or maybe because of it, Lavi flinched.

"So what if Bookman knows?"

Lavi hesitated, and Kanda pressed harder against him.

"Yuu-"

"Will he kill you?"

Not in so many words. "He . . . I . . . wouldn't be the rabbit you know and love, let's put it that way." When Kanda continued to glare at him, as if expecting him to stop babbling and answer the question, he found himself squirming. "You were - well, you were dead by then, probably, but-"

"Tyki will." Lavi stopped, stunned, and Kanda frowned at him. "Lenalee told me what happened on the Ark. Your personality would change. But if Tyki catches you without your Innocence again you're dead. So who cares if Bookman knows."

It was an interesting perspective, that Kanda would not see the disappearance of 'Lavi' as the death of his friend. Tiedoll thought so too; he chuckled from his post by the door.

"Lavi does not think that way, Kanda-kun, which is why your approach won't work with him." Lavi's eye slid back to the general as he leaned off the tile. "You must bear in mind he has been conditioned, far more rigorously than even those who worship Akuma and the Earl. A Bookman must learn to compartmentalize their emotions in order to record events as impartially as humanely possible. All of them ultimately fail, of course, but the consistent attempt has given the human race records that would never have survived otherwise."

That a general would know such basic information about the Clan was unsurprising, and Lavi struggled to keep his expression cool as Tiedoll walked to the bench Kanda had been using to bathe, sat, and started to unlace his boots. "That conditioning is what is preventing him from understanding his fear."

Failing to compartmentalize the fear was really just a symptom of something else. He already knew that, it wasn't news. Oddly though, it seemed to mean something to Kanda, because he lost some of his angry look and went directly to exasperated. Which to anyone else would have looked about the same.

"Tch." He relaxed his hold a fraction, and Lavi dared to tug on the arm at his throat.

"Great. Now that we've established that your general thinks I'm broken in the head, can I finish my shower?" He was hoping beyond hope the general was taking off his shoes to avoid tracking dirt into the shower, but that would beg the question of why the general was planning to walk around the shower room. And he didn't really want to know.

"I apologize if I gave you that impression." Trust Tiedoll to take his flippancy as sincerity. Since it kind of had been. "It's not your fault, Lavi-san, but Kanda-kun is right to be concerned. Do you truly think you would respond any better to Tyki, or any Noah, doing the same?"

"Do you really think I'm going to let it happen?"

"Did you allow Tyki to take your Innocence away from you in the springhouse?" The general tilted his head, keeping the edge off his words with a kind voice. A teaching voice, which Lavi disliked as much as he had previously disliked the label of being handled. "Something tells me you would have held onto it if you could have."

Lavi was unable to glance away as the general rolled up the bottom of his slacks. Clearly intending to get closer. "What a frightening expression, apprentice of Bookman. You suddenly seem as if you want me to stop speaking."

Kanda tightened his hold once more, possibly at the implied insult to his general, and Lavi actually winced. "Yuu-"

"Ne, Kanda-kun. He must be receptive to learning if you are to help him at all."

Oddly, Kanda turned his glare on his master. "That never stopped you."

Tiedoll barked a surprised laugh. "Ach, it's true. You were not the most accessible pupil I have had the honor to teach, and time was relatively short. But do you truly believe there is no other way to protect him?"

The last was said quite soberly, and Lavi glanced back at Kanda, the ache in his throat momentarily forgotten. No other way than what? Did they intend to swap places or something? Kanda gave him a look he'd only received a few times, the most memorable of which had been when they both stepped forward, without Innocence, to protect Komui from the level four in Hevlaska's chamber. And Lavi felt as if he was being judged.

"Lavi-san." Tiedoll was now right beside him, hands in his pockets once more. "You have not failed. It is human to fear the memory of what happened -"

"Nothing happened." He gritted his teeth when Yuu shifted his leg painfully, obviously disagreeing with his tone. But he couldn't keep the anger out of his voice. If they thought he was angry or no longer listening, it seemed that the general would call Kanda off, and that was what he wanted. Some time to _think_. Obviously they were both under the same impression, and if he was a normal Exorcist he'd understand it, but he wasn't, and it just wasn't that _simple._ So long as both would keep this from Bookman, they were finished. "Tyki caught me unaware. I didn't have a good time. I'm a little jumpy, and I appreciate the concern, but I'll handle it my own way."

"Eventually," Tiedoll conceded. "But in time? You and Yuu-kun here cost him not only the Innocence at the spring, but a missed opportunity to kill two Exorcists and destroy their Innocence as well. His interest in Allen is interest in the Fourteenth. You have merely frustrated him. Do you not suppose he will seek you out to prove to himself that he is still capable after the injury he received at the hands of Allen and Crown Clown?"

Tyki would seek him out because of what he had done to Rhode, but he honestly doubted the Noah would be personally insulted by their escape. Unless Tiedoll was right, it would affect some internal balance . . .? For all that Tyki failed to kill them, he was certainly more powerful, and could use that power against his own as easily as against them. "I really doubt we're that important to him in the grand scheme of things."

"Do you believe whatever it was that he told you?"

Verbally sparring with Tiedoll was doing wonders for his control. "It doesn't matter if I do or not. It was part of a game. Finding either one of us would definitely interest him, but I doubt he's going to be dogging our steps." Certainly not with Allen around.

"And you are willing to bet your life and your Clan's records on that guess?"

"I don't have a choice." He turned his head despite the discomfort and looked the general square. "I'm not that much of a liability. I won't get Kanda killed."

His body was slammed into the wall, somehow painful even though he didn't physically move that far, and Lavi was reasonably sure that something in his right shoulder tore again. Kanda's face was nearly touching his.

"Say something like that again and I _will_ kill you with only my hands."

"That's enough, Yuu." A bit more stern this time. "I'm not concerned about my pupil, Lavi. I'm concerned about Kloud's."

"I think you've done about all you can." Lavi couldn't help his tight voice; he literally couldn't speak uninhibited. "I'm supposed to meet Allen. If I don't show up he'll -"

"He'll understand. Lavi-san . . ." Tiedoll sighed. "He made you feel something. Something you didn't expect."

For a brief second Lavi didn't follow, and the general tapped his pupil on the shoulder. "Let him go, Yuu-kun."

And Kanda did. Reluctantly the samurai took a step back, and the arm around his throat was gone, the leg between his was gone. Lavi's first response was to nearly fall down; a strong arm caught him.

"It is a technique of Bookmen, is it not? The persona you choose has a limited range of emotion that you choose when you adopt it?"

They weren't the words Lavi would have selected, but he didn't feel like correcting the general. For any reasonable intent it was accurate. 'Lavi,' his forty-ninth alias, was generally a cheerful fellow who liked to play pranks in order to fit in and gain trust, was unafraid of change, slightly too loyal to his friends for Bookman's tastes, and enjoyed napping and meeting new people.

But really, all that was laid out prior to taking on that or any persona was a set of logic, a simple collection of rules specifically to ensure that the new alias behaved consistently for it, and not for the alias before it. It was a method of easily breaking the previous habits to take on new ones, and to make certain no new acquaintances of the fresh alias realized that it was nothing more than a mask.

Because he chose that ruleset, in essence what Tiedoll said was correct. 'Lavi' was only capable of a set range of responses, based on that logic set, and the rules that dictated when and how he would 'feel' were easily predictable.

"You do not feel any emotion that you are not prepared to feel, and only when you are prepared to feel it. That is how Bookmen maintain their control. Tyki forced you to feel something else."

It was the general holding him up, now, and Lavi struggled to find his footing. It couldn't be as simple as that. "Pain is pain," he heard himself say, almost automatically. "He didn't hurt me long enough for that to mean anything."

There was a terrible silence. "He didn't hurt you long enough," Tiedoll echoed, and Lavi could have kicked himself. "I find that hard to believe, Lavi-san. He carries the Noah of Pleasure. Few could know the opposite of it as completely as he."

"It only took as long-"

"Only?" The general moved to step in front of him, still supporting him, and Lavi realized just how powerful the man really was. He knew he'd have a hard time fighting off Kanda, but he had no chance in hell of pushing Tiedoll away. "So you were in pain when Tyki Mikk held you, and no longer? Your pain ended the moment Kanda-kun was able to tear you away?"

Lavi glared at him, but his point was hard to miss. Tiedoll wasn't talking about physical pain.

And could that be it . . ? Was he insinuating that the pleasure, however brief, was the problem? He found that hard to believe as well - as sheltered as he was, the companion of an old man who allowed no such tomfoolery, he wasn't that innocent. But there was no denying he'd never felt something that intense, it had been overwhelming -

A vise pressed down against his chest, though his eye could see nothing but steam and a cream-colored shirt and there was nothing touching him. He replayed that portion of the memory, and the vise gave him another squeeze.

It was overwhelming. In those moments of both pleasure and agony, Tyki had taken 'Lavi' away from him.

Tyki had taken him away from himself. Taken control of his body and with it his mind, his ability to reason, to adhere to his logic set. Made him fear, made him doubt, made him enjoy when he wanted-

Tyki had made him feel. He'd done exactly what he'd threatened to do, and he'd done it using nothing more than his own body. And Tyki was right. If Bookman knew, he would take 'Lavi' for good. He was afraid - he was terrified - of losing 'Lavi.'

He was afraid of losing the alias that Rhode had called his heart. And if Bookman knew, that was exactly what would happen. It would be a Bookman that took his heart, not a Noah.

It took him a moment to comprehend it all, and he found himself staring dumbly at the general when he was finished. Tiedoll gave him a sad smile. "There it is," he murmured, and Lavi fought the invisible vise, surprised by how sharply the words stung, even now that he knew why.

Tyki had said exactly the same thing, exactly the same way, for exactly the same reason. He knew why he was afraid, now, and yet he still was. He still wanted to press himself away from the general, and not because he needed the support of the wall.

Tiedoll didn't miss it. "Understanding and comprehending are not always the same thing, Lavi-san. You know what to do now, yes?"

He gave a short nod, uneasy with those eyes on him, and Tiedoll frowned at the steam on his glasses, releasing Lavi to rub them on his shirt. He was able to stand on his own, his shaking gone and replaced with a deep dread. Fear of losing one of his persona was new and not something he could easily deal with. While he was that much closer to recovering, it was far from over.

As if able to hear his thoughts, Tiedoll continued. "Unfortunately, even for you, that will take time that you may not have. Kanda-kun?"

With a grace that again reminded Lavi of the sparring ring, Kanda stepped back around his general, who even made room for him, still cleaning his glasses. Lavi watched for a moment, confused, but all Kanda did was grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him off the wall. "Stop leaning on your arm, baka."

His right arm was nearly numb from its treatment, but he had no time to enjoy the pins and needles sensation before Kanda swept behind him, grabbing it and wrapping his arm once again around Lavi's collarbone. It seemed redundant but Lavi didn't jump. This time, he drove Kanda back into the wall hard, eliciting a hiss from the other teen, and aimed his left elbow for the samurai's ribs.

Kanda twisted a little behind him, so that the blow was only glancing, and Lavi heard laughter in his ear as Kanda dodged a head strike with equal ease.

"Yuu," he tried patience this time - surely there was nothing more to gain by restraining him - "I really need to take a shower and meet with Allen-"

"I should think you'd want a shower after," the general corrected mildly, tucking his glasses into a leather sleeve, that he then replaced in a back pocket. "You didn't react as violently only because you're too distracted. You should not be surprised to find that you will continue to respond poorly to anything that reminds you of that night. In the short term, all we can do is train you to associate those things with something less frightening."

Something about that reminded him of the dread that had frozen his stomach before, and he jerked hard against Kanda, surprised to feel Kanda's not-so-waning interest against the back of his thigh. "General-"

"The way you had him pinned, I assume that was accurate?" Tiedoll apparently got affirmation from Kanda, because he focused on Lavi again. "I imagine this room is reminiscent of the bathing house. And considering the position, I imagine your struggling would have produced the same effect in the Noah of Pleasure that it did for my pupil, is that correct?

It took Lavi a moment to wrap his brain around the situation. Surely he was failing to interpret everything correctly, perhaps he mistook Lavi's own long-deflated interest and thought that spending some quality time in the shower with Kanda would get his mind off things-

"And I imagine that it did not end pleasantly for you?"

In a way, speaking with the general was very much like speaking with Tyki. "He wasn't interested in the way you're supposing."

Tiedoll gave him a small, sad smile. "I'm not sure I want to hear what he was interested in, to be honest. But the fact remains you were aware of his desire for at least some part of you?"

"His heart," Kanda supplied from behind him, suddenly, and Lavi almost jumped.

Again, not missed, either the implication or the recoil, and his eyes saddened further. "Yuu is restraining you to remind you that it is not always unpleasant."

Lavi licked his lips. "It's unpleasant."

"Perhaps you should take that up with Kanda-kun."

As if he had been waiting for those words, the arm around his collarbone tightened, and Lavi realized why it wasn't around his throat.

It was lower to make room for Kanda's teeth.

They closed tightly on the joint of his neck and shoulder, bruising the skin and tendon there before soft lips closed around the flesh, sucking and soothing the pain away. The finger that wasn't was drifting up the inside of his thigh, and since he was down a hand, still holding the cast of his right wrist, Kanda seemed to want to make up for that by pulling them closer together, pressing his chest firmly to Lavi's back and nipping upwards toward the hinge of his jaw.

"Kanda-" The Japanese teen wasn't really interested in him, was he? He had thought the swordsman's response was due to simple skin on skin and a probable lack of experience on Kanda's part, but what if he was wrong . . . ? "I d-don't think that's what he meant-"

But the general didn't say anything at all. He was too busy kneeling in front of him, unmindful of the fact that his trousers were getting soaked. The showerhead beside them was still on full blast, and the spatter was leaping high enough to wet Lavi's knee, which -

That was why Tiedoll had taken off his glasses.

He wasn't an idiot, he knew what the general was doing, it was the why that was escaping him. It was certainly shocking, it would certainly stay in the forefront of his mind . . . But surely Tiedoll didn't care about him this much, he wasn't one of the man's pupils. Why would _Kanda_ let his general do this? What the Europeans considered such a base act? "G-general, there's no need-"

"Perhaps not," he agreed, looking him up and down, "but then again, I doubt any less would do." His hands were powerful despite their gentleness, firm on his hips. Lavi flinched again and Kanda grunted, pressing back hungrily and roughly capturing an earlobe.

As before, his breath was starting to come in pants, his heart was starting to pound. It was entirely unlike what Tyki had done, but as unwelcome, and Lavi struggled with his voice. "I - wait-"

Kanda changed the angle on his arm, paining him just enough to arch back to relieve the pressure, which in turn presented the general with contradictory information. Tiedoll chuckled, running his calloused fingers up and down Lavi's sides reassuringly, not making any move to touch the hardening flesh reaching tentatively for his face. "I'm afraid you've made him wait too long already, Lavi-san."

This new position kept Lavi from escaping, and the arm around his collarbone gradually dropped, searching for and finding a nipple, pinching and worrying it until Lavi whimpered a protest. "Stop-"

This time Kanda did, his hand drifting across his chest in search of the other, and Lavi did everything he could not to jerk when Kanda found it.

This couldn't go on. He couldn't let this happen, it-

It wasn't the first time they'd done this. There was no way Kanda would be comfortable with what he was doing unless either Tiedoll had watched him before, or Tiedoll was a past lover. This was not a common Japanese practice, he was certain of it. It would be far more common for apprentice to pleasure sensei, but Kanda was only eighteen. Younger even than he was, by a fraction. And Tiedoll was of European descent and upbringing, regardless of how much time he'd spent in Japan and Africa.

When had . . . ? Lavi looked at Tiedoll with new eyes, but the general didn't flinch from his sudden scrutiny, or his sudden removal of himself from what was happening. Kanda, however, took offense, and starting licking and sucking gently at a point below his chin that reminded Lavi not unpleasantly of the kind of skin on skin contact he might have considered prior to Tyki.

Yuu knew why he wore that scarf.

"Please consider it an order, Lavi-san." It sounded a little regretful, but not too. Not enough. "And please bear in mind that it is also not completely selfless." He found that his head was thrown back to allow Kanda easier access, and he had no desire to move it and look back at Tiedoll. "We need our Exorcists, above all else, to stay alive."

A forceful tongue was drawing circles on his flesh and Lavi once again grabbed the arm around his chest, this time for support. Kanda drew him back further in answer, his erection fitting snug beneath Lavi's bottom. Tiedoll was still running his hands lightly over his hips, his stomach, then down his thighs, still neglectful of everything in between, and Lavi considered whether another protest was in order, sucking in steam as he panted.

He had wanted to murder Tyki when he had stopped. But this wasn't even on the same level, nothing ever would be again and he knew it. Playing with his nerves from inside of his body could not be done in the course of normal human contact and he didn't need to compare. This wouldn't be as overwhelming. This wouldn't cause him to lose himself.

And this would give him something else, as taboo as it might be, to think about the next time he was breathing steam.

As odd as the thought seemed, this was safe. Tiedoll wouldn't hurt him. Kanda wouldn't hurt him. The worst that could come of this would be Bookman's knowledge and the possibility that he would have to find ways to politely turn down future encounters.

Unless there was something to gain by further encounters, like hints as to exactly why master and pupil would have this sort of relationship. Or what Kloud might have done in Tiedoll's stead if she had been in the tower today.

Tiedoll eventually drew his fingertips closer, tenderly brushing up his length from the base. When he neared the tip the general used the smallest amount of pressure, gently encouraging his foreskin to glide away from the glans, and the hot pool of precum that had been collecting there spilled out, burning a fiery trail down Lavi's shaft. He shivered, causing Kanda to moan under his breath and thrust gently between his legs, bumping his balls.

Tiedoll chuckled, and a warm thumb explored the newly exposed tip, rubbing the slit and the slick fluid there. Just that simple gesture had Lavi aching for release. But the general seemed to know what he was doing; Lavi heard another chuckle and the thumb vanished, only to be replaced with the general's palm, smoothing over the tip. He bucked into the man's practiced hand, biting his bottom lip as his motion resulted in another twitch from Kanda.

Behind him he felt the swordsman start squirming, and then his borrowed bottle of shampoo landed beside them with a clatter that made him jump, thrusting harder into Tiedoll's hand than he'd intended and unable to bite back a low groan. This time Kanda moved back even further, so that his arousal slipped upwards between them, pillowed against his taut stomach and Lavi's cheeks.

Lavi tilted his head to the side when he heard Kanda holding his breath, and then the other tossed the yellow cake of soap back into its recessed shelf, grinding once into the cleft of his buttocks with an expression of extreme, glazed irritation.

"You're watching the wrong one," he growled, control clearly slipping, and Lavi turned back to the general in time to see his own tip disappear between moist lips. They clamped tightly around him, pulling gently before the general gave a powerful suck, and Lavi arched into that tight, hot wetness with a whimper.

Tiedoll took as much length as he was willing to give, and behind him, teasing fingers slipped frictionlessly between his flesh, seeking and searching and searing before they found what they were looking for. There was no soothing, no preparing; Kanda was far past that. Lavi had not even recovered from his first thrust into Tiedoll's mouth before Kanda was slipping a narrow finger inside.

Then he curled it.

It wasn't exactly what Tyki had done; it was certainly less gentle, but also less direct, and it left a searing ache in its wake that had him crying out in something close to pain. Tiedoll was taking him hard and fast, but at his moan he slowed his pace. Kanda remained motionless behind him, leaving his finger exactly where it was, and Tiedoll lapped at his erection as he released it.

"You might want to step up the pace, Yuu-kun."

"I said I wouldn't hurt him." His breath was coming more ragged than before, and while he wasn't moving his finger Kanda's length was still pressed tight and hot against him, easing up and down just as the teen had done earlier. As if he couldn't quite hold his body steady.

Lavi shook his head, closing his eye when his member throbbed angrily at the sudden lack of stimulation. "Do." When Kanda didn't say anything, he turned his head a little. "I want it to hurt."

"Did Tyki hurt you like this?"

The general's voice wasn't accusatory or judgmental, but somehow the honest question did little to cool the blood pounding towards his belly. "Didn't until the . . . end."

He left his eye closed, leaning heavily against Kanda and breathing hard, twitching every time Tiedoll's warm breath spilled over his sensitive flesh, leaving behind a delicious cooling sensation. The general's mustache had been irritating the top of his shaft so that it was a roadmap of swollen and angry red skin, crying out for more touch, and Lavi squirmed uncomfortably as Kanda's own arousal pulsed once against his ass.

That seemed to be all the other teen needed. "It _will_ hurt," he warned, and Lavi nodded impatiently.

His right arm was released; he let it fall to his side without making the slightest effort to tear himself away. Behind him, Kanda reached again for the soap, and Lavi's cock twitched and hardened further as he heard the slick, wet sounds of Kanda's flesh being pumped through his own soapy hand, saw the way his eyes darkened with lust. Yuu tossed the cake aside carelessly this time, running his hand along Lavi's ass again, not just his entrance but the perineum as well.

Lavi got the feeling that was all the reassurance Kanda was really up for giving him at the moment and he tried to pay attention to those soothing sensations as much as he could. He still tensed when the fingers retreated back to slip into him, and Kanda's jaw tucked itself into the crook of his neck.

"Gimme your leg."

He tapped the left one and Lavi lifted it, unsurprised when Kanda leaned back further still, bracing himself against the wall and angling himself a hair lower. He looped his now unoccupied left arm beneath Lavi's knee, hiking up the leg and exposing him completely, and Lavi clearly felt the difference the position provided, both internally and out. A third finger joined the first two, and Lavi struggled to keep his right knee under him when Tiedoll grabbed his shaft again, pumping and squeezing until he'd worked out another generous bead of hot fluid.

Then the fingers were gone, and Tiedoll drew his sheath down as far as he could before taking him in once again. His fingers played at the base of his length, creating a pressure there that Lavi instinctively arched up against, and then Kanda was thrusting into him.

Lavi hissed at the crisp pain that shot through his lower half like lightning, a thousandth of what he'd felt at Tyki's hands but the same flavor, and there was the vise around his chest again. But it was really there this time, it was Kanda's arm, pinning him against the other teen as he slowly pushed past a ring of muscle that wanted nothing to do with him. Lavi felt full to bursting, this was not like Kanda's fingers, not at all, but a rough tongue on his tip convinced him it wasn't all bad, and the desire to swallow him up outweighed the urge to reject him.

And then the samurai was completely sunk inside him, and the jaw on his neck withdrew. Teeth and lips clamped onto his throat possessively, forcefully, and sucked hard enough to make Lavi whimper. His thighs were quivering, his right leg shaking badly enough to slide out from under him, and Tiedoll braced him obligingly, his strong hands absolutely immovable.

There was no getting accustomed to the feeling and he was glad of it. As soon as they met skin to skin Kanda was already on the move, thrusting again and driving him into Tiedoll's hot, welcoming mouth. The hand on the base of his penis was doing something amazing and awful, and despite the visual treat he knew he'd get Lavi left his eye closed.

It was darker that way. Dark like a room with only moonlight. There was steam mixing with fresh air at their urgent, intense movement. There was heat, his body was slick with humidity and hot, sweaty silk brushed against his groin. His hips were moving without him, Kanda was fucking him into the general's mouth and the chest behind him was as hard and unforgiving as a tile wall. Grunts and moans met his ears, maybe his, maybe someone else's. And there was an unfamiliar, sweet sensation of pressure that should have already built past the shattering point.

Lavi groaned, caught between their bodies and somehow even harder, and joined in Kanda's rhythm. Together they hammered him into the general, creating unbearable suction for Lavi when they jointly withdrew. Kanda began to shudder in earnest behind him, and Lavi opened his eye again, curving back with a hoarse cry when Tiedoll released whatever it was he had been holding.

Kanda's teeth closed on his shoulder with enough pressure to break skin, but that pain was secondary to everything, just like his arm had been. Lavi held his breath as his body coiled and tensed, his cock jerking and twitching against Tiedoll's tongue, spitting every ounce of him into the general's throat. He watched Tiedoll swallow his tip over and over again, accepting everything, and each thrust from Yuu caused another uncontrollable spasm.

The samurai moaned in his ear, obviously watching the same, and Lavi could actually feel him tightening up inside him. Lavi's muscles pulsed, or perhaps Kanda did, and then the vise around his chest yanked him back, and Yuu pierced him deeper still, and heat that he'd just released pooled deep inside him once again as Kanda pounded into him.

By the time Lavi caught his breath he and Yuu had both sunk to the floor, where uncomfortably hot water lapped at their bare, flushed skin and crept towards the dull ache that permeated Lavi's entire bottom half. Tiedoll was sitting on his heels, looking more than a little amused at the two of them, and Lavi hoped he didn't appear as dazed as he felt. He turned for Kanda, wincing at the pain it brought.

For his part, the Japanese teen shoved at him roughly. "Get off."

"Did, thanks," he quipped, but he tried to sit up just the same, massaging what were going to be obvious human bite marks on his right shoulder and neck. Then he gasped at a shockingly strong stinging sensation coming directly from his bottom.

"Ah, yes, well, soap is not the best lubricant, but I am afraid I was a bit unprepared-"

Lavi waved him off before Tiedoll could become more concerned, rolling onto his right hip in the direction of the shower. Which the general was right, he certainly needed now. Though Tiedoll had cleaned him up nicely, he was pretty certain his smarting backside was probably not such a pretty picture. This was confirmed with a surreptitious glance at Yuu, whom he caught watching him almost curiously.

None of them knew how the other would react.

The thought almost made Lavi smile. The pain he felt stretching for the discarded soap wiped it right off, though, and he groaned before deciding to remain right where he was, half under the painfully hot water, arm outstretched for the soap, chest to the floor. It was a extremely compromising position, but no worse than his previous, and it was an extremely comfortable floor. Never before had he felt such an urge to sleep after orgasm.

He heard Tiedoll laugh. "I see your penchant for naps is still alive and well. But should you really be soaking your cast?"

No. Matron was going to kill him. Though if she saw him in this state he wasn't sure he'd survive to be killed for the cast. "Mmno." But he did summon his strength and push himself back up before the general made Kanda help him, or worse, came to do it himself. He would put nothing past that man, not now. Another focused effort netted him the hated soap, and he wriggled his hind end under the stream of hot water, making a face at the bite it brought.

Kanda was giving him a dark look, though he was sure he saw the tiniest glint of amusement, before he approached his general, who was already standing and surveying his thoroughly soaked trousers with a smile. He said something in a low and self-deprecating tone, to which his pupil tched, and Lavi forced himself onto his feet, bracing a steadying hand on the wall and surprised at the weakness in his knees.

Hot water ran down his shoulders, being barely cooled by his skin before burning its way into his crack, and rather than wash all the soap off only to lather up again he bit the bullet, soaping himself as quickly as possible. He supposed getting a little shit on yourself was the price for that sort of intimacy, and resolved to have taken care of that little problem the next time he was all but raped in a bathroom.

Another probable benefit to Tyki's powers.

The thought still struck him, still affected him, and Lavi let his forehead rest on the tiled wall, using both hands to wipe and scrub himself clean. It stung, and stung more when he pushed a probing finger inside to get at the soap that had started all this stinging in the first place. The skin was swollen inside and out, tender, and the irritation was worse in some places than others so he could assume the soap had only been able to do so much.

Hiding this from Matron, relatively easy. Hiding what he imagined his neck looked like, particularly since he'd have to bare the arm to get a new cast, that was going to be a lot harder. Maybe even impossible.

Maybe Lenalee had something that could help. She was pretty pale, all things considered . . .

He turned his head, intending to tease Kanda with the possibility, and nearly dropped the soap. He kept his mouth shut, though; Yuu wouldn't have answered him anyway.

Kanda's mouth was busy with the front of his general's trousers.

Tiedoll stood quite still, eyes either closed or fully focused on his pupil. One hand was tangled in the untidy, ink-dark hair and the other tucked under his armpit in a relaxed position of restraint. Kanda didn't seem too happy with that, either; his hands were working urgently and head was bobbing swiftly, and even over the shower Lavi thought he heard a low hum. The general's fingers tightened a little, but he didn't let himself move very much at all, never forced Yuu's head.

Lavi turned back to the shower despite his curiosity, unsure whether to be pleased or insulted that Tiedoll would prefer to watch Kanda while he was waggling his ass at the two of them unashamedly. Used and dirty ass, but then again, they didn't seem to mind that _he_ was there. And he could imagine that, for anyone who felt that way about at least one of the two young men that had been straining for release literally in his face, remaining detached would have been difficult.

That, at least, fit with what he knew about Japanese culture. What was going on right behind him was not unheard of. In fact, if a tea set was beside Kanda right now it would be just another evening in the emperor's chambers. Though traditionally they used a young boy to milk the emperor before adding his seed to his tea in a nightly ritual designed to invigorate and extend the life of someone they believed wouldn't die anyway.

It also made him wonder what kind of relationship Froi Tiedoll might have with Noise Marie.

Lavi began the arduous task of actually taking a shower, made all the more awkward with this new set of aches and pains, but he had to admit that when he was done, there was no sense of panic even when he sniffed at the steam purposefully. A glance to his right showed that Kanda was also under the shower, rinsing himself off, and Tiedoll was -

Lavi blinked, shaking the water out of his eyes, and then winced again when the twist pulled at his nether regions. Kanda gave him what was unmistakably a smirk, though he hid it with a practiced flip of soaked hair over his shoulder. He was holding his translucent bar of green soap, and when he glanced over again, feeling Lavi's stare, he jerked his chin at the cake in Lavi's shower.

"Stings, doesn't it."

Lavi almost gaped at him. Almost. Instead, he simpered, glancing curiously at in Tiedoll's direction for a moment.

"Do you think he'd dry my towel the same way?"

It really was an ingenious use for Garden of Eden, but more impressive that he could have summoned it without damaging the shower room and without making enough light or noise for Lavi to have noticed. Tendrils of the bright forest had even crept towards the drain, as if excited at the prospect of actual water instead of Innocence energy, and the general stood in the center, naked from the waist down, with his hands behind his back, in serious conversation with a white wren.

And somehow, the attacking form of his Innocence, the naked men in tutus, made _complete_ sense.

"Che," Kanda replied airily, pulling his own dry towel off the hot water pipe and wrapping it unhurriedly around his waist. Lavi expected some kind of hassle for forcing the other Exorcist to wash himself twice, but the samurai didn't say anything at all. He gathered his shower things, including that cursed bar of soap, and padded out of the shower room on nigh silent bare feet.

No nod at his general. Who, admittedly, would have been oblivious. No comment to him.

Exactly as he might have if absolutely nothing had happened.

And no apology for the biting, either. Not that Lavi had expected any. And not that he'd thought being bitten could be so nice. The last time an Exorcist had bitten him it was to save his life, and he'd been more concerned about any Akuma virus Kuro-chan might have missed and how _much_ blood he'd had to take to accomplish the feat.

Which brought him back to the original problem, which was getting his cast replaced without showing Matron anything else, either stiffness or the marks.

And he'd also either have to put on his uniform wet or air dry, which would make him later than he already was.

"Oh, Lavi-san? I sent Kanda-kun to get you another towel. I don't want to keep you too long, since you need to make a stop in the infirmary before you meet with Allen-kun."

Apparently Tiedoll wasn't as oblivious as he looked.

Lavi wasn't sure if it was a subtle reminder not to skip the dreaded infirmary visit or something else entirely, and he gave the general a grin that didn't make the older man wince. "Thanks."

Tiedoll reached into his slacks, hanging over a breezy branch, and pulled out the leather case, extracting his glasses. Lavi was surprised to see the wren - possibly the manifestation of his Innocence? - was gone. "Oh, my. Yuu-kun did quite a number on you."

Lavi resisted the urge to run his hand over the bruises and swollen skin. "It's not unexpected. He does everything that way."

The general laughed, suddenly and sharply. "He does," he agreed, mirth sparkling behind the glasses. "And to your right shoulder too. Don't worry overly about the marks, though. Knowing our Eliza, she won't say a word."

Lavi cocked his head to the side, the record firmly in place. "Matron's name is Eliza?"

The general gave him a knowing look. "I would suggest you keep that under your scarf, as it were, for when you really need it."

Lavi nodded, and then his world was blanketed in white.

He froze for a moment, then caught the cotton as it started to slip off his head. "Thanks, Yuu!"

"Tch."

"Now, about Bookman-"

Lavi shook his head, scrubbing the towel through his hair vigorously. "I can handle Gramps. I'll just tell him what happened." When he was done with his hair he moved the towel to his back, like a cape, and gave both the watching Exorcists another smile.

"Kanda jumped me in the showers, I pinned him, he bit me, and you came in and saved me from becoming rabbit pie." It was almost even true. So long as he didn't name the party that Tiedoll was attempting to save him from.

Kanda looked decidedly unimpressed. "Like I would bite you, baka."

Lavi shrugged, padding past them toward the shower room entrance. "Panda doesn't know you any better than Chaoji-kun does. By the time I'm done telling this story, Chaoji's gonna think-" It was cut off with an undignified yelp as an iron hand grabbed the back of his head. Kanda let him go, or rather couldn't hold on to him without ripping out a good portion of his hair, and Lavi rubbed his stinging scalp vigorously, pouting ridiculously as he retreated.

Bookman wouldn't believe him, of course, but Bookman already knew that 'Lavi' was a bit more attached to the Exorcists in the Order than he was really supposed to be, and as long as 'Lavi' continued to recover from what he'd seen, it would be enough.

It had to be.

Lavi removed his nighttime eyepatch, replacing it with his daytime one, and got a good look at his shoulder before shaking his head and gingerly grabbing his uniform pants. Hopefully Bookman wouldn't turn out to be as protective as Cross Marian was.

Maybe he could ask Allen-kun how he was getting around that.

--

Fin?


End file.
